As ever, my life has been hectic with things related to my business, the studio and of course home life – I knew I hadn’t written a blog post for a while; well Christmas was the last one I remembered.  What I hadn’t realised was that I never posted anything about the second Metal Ages sculpture, and that was well, AGES ago!

Back at the end of September, we finally got the opportunity to install the final sculpture at Erewash Museum in Ilkeston.  I say ‘we’ – that would be me with the camera and occasionally passing a drill or screwdriver, and Gavin & Mark doing the lifting, carrying, digging, drilling….

This one is a rather large sculpture.  It’s over two metres high, and about two and a half metres wide.  It is made up of 7,000 nuts, which represents the size of the workforce when Stanton Ironworks was in it’s heyday.  It has four ‘vines’ growing from the ground, which represent the four main foundries that could be found in the Ilkeston area back in the 1900’s.  Across the middle is a shank, used for pouring molten metal in a foundry.  The centre of this holds a glass disk, which like the ‘Old Men & Pipes‘ sculpture at King George Gallery is inspired by the ‘fire in the sky’ that was ever present when Stanton was a busy place, and also representing new beginnings.