 Once the fired stone is out of the kiln, it is still possible to mentally reconstruct it in its original form. |
| I did tests on small stones before collecting and committing myself to the larger ones. |
| A stone is ingrained with geological and historical memories. |
| Photography is a way of putting distance between myself and the work which sometimes helps me to see more clearly what it is that I have made. |
| The first snowball I froze was put in my mother's deep freeze when I was in my early 20s. |
| Some of the snowballs have a kind of animal energy. Not just because of the materials inside them, but in the way that they appear caged, captured. |
| Even in winter an isolated patch of snow has a special quality. |
| Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood. |
| The relationship between the public and the artist is complex and difficult to explain. There is a fine line between using this critical energy creatively and pandering to it. |
| My art is an attempt to reach beyond the surface appearance. I want to see growth in wood, time in stone, nature in a city, and I do not mean its parks but a deeper understanding that a city is nature too-the ground upon which it is built, the stone with which it is made. |
| People also leave presence in a place even when they are no longer there. |
| The early firings contained many stones. |
| I have worked with this red all over the world - in Japan, California, France, Britain, Australia - a vein running round the earth. It has taught me about the flow, energy and life that connects one place with another. |
| Ideas must be put to the test. That's why we make things, otherwise they would be no more than ideas. There is often a huge difference between an idea and its realisation. I've had what I thought were great ideas that just didn't work. |
| I am not a performer but occasionally I deliberately work in a public context. Some sculptures need the movement of people around them to work. |
| I enjoy working in a quiet and subversive way. |
| Confrontation is something that I accept as part of the project though not its purpose. |
