Those of you who know me personally will know that there’s been quite a lot of stuff going on in my personal life lately (that may be a bit of an understatement), which has prevented me from spending much time in the studio or on projects.

But, as the Metal Age project is on a deadline, I’ve had to pick up the ball again get stuck in.

I managed to get along to another one of the Walking for Health sessions, although I didn’t take any photos on the last one, it was far too cold to take the gloves off!  And couple of Saturdays ago, we ran the glass inclusions workshop at the Erewash Musuem, it was the first sunny day of the year so we didn’t get lots and lots of visitors – I think people were taking advantage of the first chance to get in the garden.  We met a friendly family, where grandad, like a lot of people in Ilkeston, had worked at Stanton at one time; it was great, he had a lot of stories to tell.

Gavin and I are now working on the plans for the two sculptures, and for what else will be going in the exhibition.  We’ve also been planning the next workshops at King George Gallery in March – we will be working with students from local schools and colleges in the day, and having open drop-in sessions on the Tuesday evenings.

I’m still playing catch up, so this is a bit of a post-and-run, but I thought I would show you a few photographs of our site visit – current owners, St Gobain, allowed us access to locked up buildings and the old Stanhope Plant – it was fascinating.

I took this photograph after Gavin commented that if you looked down at (extremely thick) layer of black dust on the floor, it was undisturbed apart from our footprints.  It was like virgin snow….

Something fascinated me about the chains and hooks that we found lying in trolleys around the place.  Not sure this conveys the sheer scale of everything (giant light bulbs, giant oil cans, giant sack trolleys – I felt like one of the Borrowers at times!) – I just liked the pattern of this one: