Graeme Mitcheson – Stone Sculptor, ARBS

Despite being up at Hall Farm for the last 8 years, I have never taken the trouble to erect a sign to let anyone know that I am there. Then, last week I had a rush of blood and ordered not just 1 sign but 3 ! Next time you are driving on the A512 between Ashby and Loughborough, be sure to check them out. I plan on constructing a multi storey car par in the coming weeks too in order to accommodate the rush.

The signs are good.

I am pleased say that I will be attending the “Sock” show in Loughborough at the end of March. I have not been to a show like this for years so am looking forward to getting out of the workshop for a couple of days and meeting some real people! I will be there with my friend Damien who tinkers with a bit of lettercutting. Being as it is the “Sock” event, I will probably bring along my Portland Limestone Stocking Feet. This is one the finest sculptures I never made, as it was a proposal for a site in an East Midlands town, I wont say which town as I plan to have a moan about them in a future blog! The carving is of my wife Ruth’s feet, she often does a spot of modelling for such projects. Unfortunately, the sculpture, which would have been 2.5 metres tall was not chosen and thus I am left with the model, but a very nice model it is too. Come and see it at the “Sock” in Loughborough on the 27th and 28th of March.

Sculptural Nutcracker

A few years back I was approached by a student studying for a PHD at Loughborough University who was asking artists /architects/ designers etc to come up with ideas for nutcracker designs. The idea being that he could study the creative path of each design and compare how a sculptor went about creating the object as opposed to an engineer for example. These were generally in the form of CAD or intricate drawings. As it turned out, the other nutcrackers were highly mechanical, many had cogs and complicated crushing mechanisms. I took a different approach and created probably the simplest nutcracker you can imagine. It was carved and the polished in Ancaster Limestone. The top piece. a slightly fallic cone and the bottom a square block with a small notch carved in it to prevent the nut from rolling away. The cone crashes down on the poor nut and bingo! Anyway, this caused a bit of a stir back in the university office and the nutcracker apparantly became a bit of a talking point. The student bought my nutcracker in the end and a few years later bought one for his tutor when he left. Since then , I have made a number of them as gifts and for wedding presents etc. If anyone out there fancies one, I sell them for around £100. I gererally make them from Ancaster as it takes a good polish and makes for a very sexy object

In addition to weekend stone carving courses, I am also happy to offer individual stone carving tuition to those who prefer to learn on a one on one basis. This will be equally as intense and hard work however I will be able to monitor your progress more thoroughly throughout the day and give you a more in depth knowledge of the art of carving stone. This might  include discussing suppliers of suitable carving stone for your needs, tools and some handy tips that might be missed in the hurly burly of the normal stone carving weekends. You may wish to specialise in one aspect of carving that I will be able to guide you on more comprehensively. Individual tuition for one day is £120 for your 1st day and £100 thereafter.

As you can see, I have moved the top half of the Kilkenny Limestone sculpture so that I can work at a comfortable height on the bottom piece. Carving work is almost done which just leaves the polishing which is probably one of the most boring jobs on earth.

Moving the sculpture

I move the sculpture using the gantry for slow and careful lifting and also a device called a split pin lewis. This means you can move it safely without risk of damaging edges by using slings etc.

A couple of weeks back, I spent a day in Rawlins Community College in Quorn in Leicestershire. As ever with events like these, you are never quite sure how the day will pan out, not in terms of what the kids are capable of, as they are generally great, but more in terms of what facilities and staff help that you are going to get on the day. As it turned out, when I arrived, there were no tables to put the stone on, not a good start . There were about 30 visiting artists at the college that day so things were pretty chaotic but luckily I managed to nab the caretaker who plucked some relatively sturdy old exam desks out of thin air. The room I was allocated was the training room for their brick laying courses, it does not sound glamorous but ideal for knocking lumps of rock about. I took 10 stones into the college and wanted the kids to carve a gargoyle. The day was split into 3 x one and a half hour sessions with 10 kids per session. The 1st 10 had the job of designing the gargoyle and starting the carving, the next 10 had the long slog in the middle and the last lot had the job of finishing the work, standing back and basking in the glory of their creation. All of the kids were brilliant, an hour and a half is a long time to be chiselling when you have never done it before but no-one go bored or tired and they all saw their session through to the end. Below is a pic of  the finishd gargoyles. Probably the best bit of the day was when the the kids who attended the 1st session returned to see how their sculptures ended up. Some of them were completely unrecognisable ( the gargoyles not the kids) whereas others had had kept their form throughout the day. The college will keep the carvings and they should make for great little features around the college for years to come.As for the teacher who was meant to be helping ? The kids needed no looking after as they were so engrossed with their carving that he was able to spend the day carving his own gargoyle. He really got into it and made a super piece of work !

10 Gragoyles at Rawlins Community College

Adrian Chiles and Gary Lineker.

I carry out many projects like this, sometimes as part of public art project or often during a project such as the Rawlins one. There is a PDF document on www.chisel-it.co.uk which outlines a few ways of running a stone carving session in a school and gives an idea of prices.

I will be running 2 stone carving weekends in the coming months. The 1st is in April but is fully booked, the 2nd is on the 22nd and 23rd of May, I still have spaces available on this one. The cost is £130 fo the weekend and includes all stone, tools and many cups of tea. The courses are designed to be productive and fun but they are hard work. There are more details on my website at www.chisel-it.co.uk . They are aimed at beginners although many people have returned a number of times to carve more stuff. We try to get everyone to complete a sculpture so they can take it home at the end of the course although some people equip themselves with tools and finish them off themselves. I have been running courses for nearly 15 years and  there have been sculptures of pretty much everything including violins, dolphins, horses, many heads, penguins, pelicans, sundials, naked torsos, water features, abstract pieces, legs, shells and an alien from the movie “Alien”. The oldest person to attend was a lady who travelled all the way from Portsmouth and she was 82, proving that anyone can have a go.

Welcome to my 1st ever blog post. Hopefully you will have visited www.chisel-it.co.uk where you will have seen images of my sculptures and the sort of stuff that I get up to including courses and work in schools etc. I hope that this blog site will allow me to post up to date pics of my work and sculptures evolving from rough blocks through to the finished pieces. I will also post dates of courses and any events that I will be attending.

Right now in the workshop I am coming towards the end of a sculpture due to be sited in Market Warsop in Notts. It is a Kilkenny Limestone piece about 2m tall. As you can see, parts of the stone are polished and I have worked back into these to create texture and the finished surface.  Kilkenny limestone is a beast of a stone, not great for carving but it does take a good polish and picks up the textures that I wanted. It is extremely hard for a limestone and therefore great for a public sculpture. I have used it before on a number pieces, the mussel sculpture on Conwy Quay being my favourite to date. This piece even made it onto the Antiques Road Show when Fiona Bruce talked about the mussel fishing industry while more recently made it into the Britannica Book of Molluscs (or something similar) You can see this on the opening page of www.chisel-it.co.uk The 1st time I used Kilkenny was for the seats in Museum Square in Leicester in 2003. The polish on these has faded but it has kept a good shine where people have been touching and climbing on them which is great.

I will continue to post pics about the sculpture as it comes closer to completion.