Sculpture by the kilo

I have talked about pricing art to many people, I have read so many blogs and articles about how to price your artwork, I have run in ever decreasing circles around the subject. It is only this summer that I have finally found a pricing strategy with which I feel comfortable. 

One of my other endeavors includes polishing concrete floors, I have had to develop a pricing strategy that covers costs and overheads, mobilisation and materials. This results in a per meter cost that covers one day, two days etc. Each day has a range of area that can be polished within that day or number of days and each day has a certain overhead. The larger the area the lower the relative cost per square meter, to a point of lowest cost per meter achievable. 

I have adapted this formula to weight and hit a price point that achieves an equitable rate of remuneration to cover costs of production as well as the relative years of training and practice. A small polished sculpture weighing less than 100grams has a minimum cost of £96 rising to £504 for a sculpture that weighs a Kilogram. Two Kilogram stones cost slightly less than double at £912 and at three kilos the price starts dropping to £408 per kilo and at Five kilo it has reduced to £374 per kilo, The price per kilo keeps reducing so that at Ten kilos the cost is £270 per Kilo and at Fifty Kilograms the cost is down to £198.48 per kilo. All my sculptures are signed with my mark and recorded for proof of provenance. 

Shipping
Sculptures up to 10 Kilograms will be sent by Carrier insured and recorded. Sculptures above this weight can be delivered in person by myself. 

Any sculpture above 20 kilos I will consult with the buyer and supply a bespoke base for the sculpture. I will personally deliver and install anywhere within the UK at the quoted cost. 

These terms apply to international buyers but extra shipping and delivery costs will be added at a mutually agreed rate. 

Prices will be subject to periodic review.

By appointment and consultation I can transform a stone of your choice. if you are reading this you probably have a favorite stone of your own that can be shaped polished and gilded however humble your estate.

The workshop as Stock pot and Lou Mei

Master sauce
The master sauce (or Lou mei) is a form of braising stock used in Chinese cuisine. It is often re-used, adding new spices and ingredients as you go.

Some Chinese stocks or master sauces are rumored to have been in continual use for years, increasing in depth and flavour with each use.

I make use of the same technique within the workshop. There is always a stock pot of some description - usually a bucket or plastic storage bin -  into which broken stones or chippings left over from carving get thrown. I often throw the debris swept up from the studio floor into this stock pot along with all concrete and glass trimmings, flashings and offcuts. These get thrown into the pot and eventually mixed into a concrete sculpture of some description. Often these sculptures are then trimmed and cut to enhance the shape or remove material that is not required. The leftovers from the new sculpture are then put back into the stock pot and mixed with new aggregates. In this way my sculptures literally contain a trace of previous works.

Clastic work flow
clastic  1. (Geological Science) (of sedimentary rock, etc) composed of fragments of pre existing rock that have been transported some distance from their points of origin.

The stock pot method of gathering materials for concrete sculpture is augmented with the addition of waste and spare materials left from some of the larger public and private works I have produced I collect and store scrap or spare materials from larger artworks resulting from bulk orders of pigments or sand etc. I collect blocks, bricks, stone and scraps from stone yards. These eventually get mixed in or used in sculptural collages such as “The Moria (three fates)”.

The three bases of these sculptures are the offcuts from uplighters that were placed on the inside of large granite Tree tubs. Other parts of the three fates sculptures came from a stone yard in Scotland and were the offcuts from the making of stone seats and bollards. The threads of life in the set are reinforcement steel that was discarded by a site concrete crushing plant.

Some of the aggregates, stone or concrete waste may have been on the shelf for 20 years before being mixed back into the latest sculpture. I will often produce a set of sculptures using up these store cupboard ingredients: the Black and Jack Series uses white concrete bricks from the registry office in Blackpool, spare red quartz concrete from the Road to the Isles in Auchterarder, and blue concrete samples with black Sikaflex from the Comedy Carpet.

Erratic series

Lately my sculptures have come full circle, returning to the techniques of my earlier career. As a monumental mason I would take a piece of stone and shape it for a purpose, for instance: flat for ease of lettering, arched for architectural conceit, and symbolically ornamented with crosses or flowers. The stone would be polished to bring out its beauty and provide a smooth surface to carve letters into. A gravestone’s form is often secondary to its function, its primary purpose being to bear an inscription in commemoration of a life.

In contrast, my polished boulder sculptures celebrate the stone itself. I choose them from many similar stones, selecting them with a mixture of knowledge, experience and intuition. I favour hard stones as they take a deeper polish and will keep that polish for decades longer than softer limestone or marbles. They are partly self-selecting as most of them are glacial erratics, this means they are hard enough to survive glacial travel and journeys down river courses. Softer stones tend to wear away to sand and silt.

The forms taken by these hard stones tend to be of large chips and shards which are flatter or more angular the harder they are. Some boulders have rolled and tumbled to soft forms that I accentuate when shaping with a grinder, others have angular edges that tend to be pulled into curving lines as two planes meet.  Some of these boulders are true glacial erratics and I have picked them up from my travels and from stone yards and building sites I have worked on over the years. Some were already in the gardens of houses I have rented.

The erratic series sculptures are named simply by the places where I found them, at times creating descriptive poetic tensions such as “Featherstone”.

Gilt edge

Gilding in my sculpture is not as in letter carving, a rich and lasting colouring of letters,  but rather a form of reverence and celebration. I use gold leaf on the exposed and untouched surfaces that originate from often violent events, such as one rock smashing against another. The point of contact can often be seen where a large flake is broken away from the stone or the stone broken in two entirely. These events in a stone’s journey are celebrated as a moment in time, and a major event in the shaping and forming of these erratics.

I used gold leaf as a letter cutter as gold does not oxidise or deteriorate as quickly as paint. It was seen as a long lasting material that also came from a tradition of show and ceremony. Divinity was depicted with gilded halos and gold often stood in for sunlight.

This is a celebration of imperfection: the crack and the break form part of the beauty in contrast to the polished perfection.

Polishing stones and Yugen

Polishing produces a lens into the stone; it gives us an otherwise unseen glimpse into the rock’s history written in a physical language of minerals. By polishing the surface we can define individual grains and crystals, see the depth and range of tone and read the makeup of the stone.

There are infinite varieties of colour and pattern caused by random chance, but these can only be viewed by polishing the surface of the stone. These polished boulders are snapshots of an ongoing process. They bear witness to a violent and chaotic birth, the unleashing of immense energy and the crushing pressure of gravity and time. Many are igneous volcanic rocks with fine crystals that tell of rapid cooling. Others have large crystal formations from slow cooling at the centre of lava flows or pools. Differing minerals form a vast range of colour and contrast. The process and heaving and shifting produces cross banding and fracturing that become infilled with mineral veins. Some of the rocks I have carved and polished are thee and a half billion years old.

Others are sedimentary and can include signs of life such as fossils of shells, plants or corrals.

However long we choose to gaze at these polished stones, it is a still a brief glimpse of the object on its endless journey of atrophy or transformation on a timescale beyond humanity. When I select, polish and present a stone to an audience, I am only temporarily removing it from that journey. That we look at them for seconds or minutes and can comprehend this is what the Japanese call Yugen

Yūgen suggests that which is beyond what can be said, but it is not an allusion to another world. It is about this world, this experience.

Antropocene erratic (explanation)

Nonglacial erratics 
In geology an erratic is any material which is not native to the immediate locale but has been transported from elsewhere. The most common examples of erratics are associated with glacial transport, either by direct glacier-borne transport or by ice rafting. However, some erratics have been identified as the result of kelp holdfasts, which have been documented to transport rocks up to 40 centimetres (16 in) in diameter. Others are rocks entangled in the roots of drifting logs, and some are transported having been accumulated in the stomachs of seals during foraging.

Anthropocene Erratics
adjective: Anthropocene
1. relating to or denoting the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.

As well as the Glacial and non-glacial erratics, I would add erratics of the anthropocene. Having been in and around the stone industry I have seen the rising globalisation of the movement of stone. Precious stones and stone artifacts have always been moved around by humans: a jewel or good stone tool would be moved along with nomadic tribes. Jadeite ceremonial axes are found all around Europe. There was trade in rocks containing metal ores, the location of these stones would create new trade routes and a rise in status of the people with knowledge about the stone’s location and extraction.

Then there was the moving of larger stones for ceremonial purposes. The time and effort put into the moving of the pillars for Stonehenge would have been

extraordinary. As time marched on and society made steady progress, certain minerals were put to new uses. The prohibitive cost and logistics of moving heavy weights around meant that only economically and industrially precious stone was moved long distances. Building stone was nearly always locally sourced and exotic imports of decorative stone would be kept to a minimum unless great show of wealth was required, for example in Cathedrals and Palaces. The rise of industrial revolution saw the first mass movement of stone. The use of stone as ballast in shipping saw the moving of stone around the planet in ever greater quantities. Unlike glacial and natural erratics, anthropocene erratics are selective.

When I started in the memorial trade at the beginning of the 1980’s, local stone was still used where possible as imports were still classed as expensive. The two main sources of import were Italy for white marble and India for black granite. Until that point Swedish Bonaccord black granite was the most expensive and finest quality black granite, closely followed by first quality Indian and at times South African black granite. Apart from the European sources the stones were empire imports. 35 years on there is a choice of decorative stones from all around the world and it is available in abundance thanks to modern extraction techniques, tooling and transportation. In my workshop I have stone from all corners of the British Isles plus specimens from Brazil, China, Venezuela, India, Africa, Afghanistan, North America, Russia, Norway Italy, France and Spain.

These anthropocene erratics have mingled with the glacial erratics I have collected. By selecting glacial erratics and relocating them from my studio I transform them into anthropocene erratics.

Making a mark

Most of my sculptures are carved with my mark; this was developed during idle time when I worked as a Letter carver. It is a reverse R using the upright of the letter T which is counterbalanced with a C. These are my full initials, my middle name being Trevor.

Although not a masons mark as such I have always signed important pieces with it; sometimes the signature becomes a prominent part of the artwork.

A piece of green Borrowdale series slate has a large mark carved into it rather than leaving an open gilded facet.

In one large concrete sculpture I have taken the whole of the forward aspect and carved my mark deep into the concrete which had the result of creating a face or huge head.