Graeme Mitcheson – Stone Sculptor, ARBS

This is one of the 2 rocks that will be used to create the sculpture in Harbottle Park. It is a 5.25 tonne lump of Peak Moor (Derbyshire) sandstone. At the moment it is on the quarry floor but soon it will be having a base cut and then it will be delivered to my workshop where I can finally start to carve the dozens and dozens of faces into it. Fair enough, it doesn’t look much at the moment but in a couple of months it will be standing proudly in a park in Newcastle overlooking the Tyne, the Sage and St.James’s Park. Watch this space….

Between a rock and a hard place.

The crowd sculpture for Byker

This is how the sculpture for Harbottle Park in Byker should look when it is finished. I have selected the stone for the work so know the size and shapes of the blocks that l be heading my way soon. The community have provided me with over 200 drawings that can be used in the sculpture, all that remains is for me to design and carve them into the 8 and a half tonnes of sandstone that is shortly to be arriving at Hall Farm. Hopefully they will be ready to install around November time. Unfortunately, the stones are going to be too big and too heavy to get inside the workshop so will have to be carved outside. In that respect, some good weather over the next couple of months would not go amiss. The stones are in the process of having flat bases sawn at the quarry to aid their standing up but I will post more pictures when they arrive.

Lizards are known for staying still for long periods of time.

I was out and about  a couple of weeks back and passed close by to one of my old sculptures and decided to pop and see it. I am always a little aprehensive when I go and visit old work, I guess I am always a tad worried that someone has taken a dislike to it or that it wont have weathered well over time. Clients are often worried about graffiti on the artwork but I can honestly say that I have only had to remove graffitti on 2 sculptures in almost 15 years of making art in the public realm. Needless to say, I was was very pleased to see the Lizard basking in the long grass near Ansley Common in Warwickshire. The piece was part of the quarryman’s walk project about 5 years ago and the sandstone reptile has weathered well over time.

I am coming towards the end of the carving for All Saints school and will post some finished pictures over the next few days.

Tom scales the climbing boulder in his socks !

This is a picture of “Tom” trying out the climbing boulder in Handsworth Community Park near Sheffield. I spent a few hours there last week carving some hand and foot holes into the boulders so that they provide a challenging climbing rock for the kids. Guided by Tom, a climbing expert, I carved holes and handles so that there were opportunities for climbers of all abilities to manoeuvre around the rock. Although I still have a few more bits to carve on it, Tom managed to climb all the way around the stone which I have to say was very impressive.

This week I am based in Rawlins Community College in Quorn, Leicestershire where I will be helping the kids to make 3 sculptural seats. I popped along last week to help them to generate some ideas for the sculptures. There were some exciting designs and I have the selected the 3 to be carved this week. I will post some images here during the course of the week to show how they are getting on.

Some dogs really do spend too much time in the bathroom.

I have just returned from a 5 day stint on the Isle of Sheppey where I have been helping my good friend and fellow sculptor Richard Perry to run some stone carving workshops as part of a sculpture project he is working on down there. Having leaped out of bed at 10 to 4 on Saturday night/Sunday morning, I trundled down in my yellow truck, affectionately known as the “custard coupe”, to join Richard  and set up for the first of  2 workshops on a housing estate in Rushenden on the Island. The workshops were well attended and hugely productive so a good day was had. We continued running daily workshops, gradually getting to know some of the characters on the estate, many returned on a number of occasions to do more stone carving or quite often just for a chat. Once I had familiarised myself with the orange dogs that are native to Sheppey and grown accustomed to Richard’s erratic driving around the Island (and round and round Herne Bay Travelodge) a thoroughly enjoyable time was had. Richard encouraged the residents of the estate to create their own personally designed fish. They then carved them into small slabs of stone which will create a path near his larger sculpture later this year. Richard is quite useful with a chisel and his work can be seen at www.richardperrysculpture.com – just don’t ask him directions to hotels in Kent !

My relief carved fish for Richard's path

Untitled but I am working on it.....

Early last month I installed this twisting sculpture in Nether Whitacre, North Warwickshire. I spent some time talking through ideas and themes for the work with residents of the village. I decided that there were 4 themes coming through that needed incorporating into the artwork in some way. They were all things that they felt were important in the development of the village over the years. Thus the 4 sided sculpture with the themes gradually twisting together. The 4 themes were the railway, agriculture, the rivers and the flora and fauna of the village. The stone is Woodkirk Sandstone from a quarry near Leeds. This is probably the best sandstone that I have carved, tight grained and good colour.  Unfortunately the service at the quarry can be rather unpredictable in my experience.  This sculpture is 1 of 3 that I created for the North Arden Heritage Trail during 2009. The others were in Fillongley and Ansley. You will find pictures of these on my website at www.chisel-it.co.uk