The stone sculpture of Mo in our lounge

Colin's Cotswold stone sculpture

The project started on 30/4/1998. We had just moved into a new house with my mother, Ray, when Mo and I had a short holiday to the Cotswolds. We had previously seen a quarry from a distance but this time we found the gates and went inside. The man there could not have been more helpful. We explained what we wanted: a piece of stone for sculpture that we could lift into the car. He took us down the quarry and explained how the stone was different at different depths. The most dense stone which would best withstand the weather was near the bottom and we selected a piece we thought we might just lift. We had a lovely night at a bed and breakfast in the village of Churchill. The stone in the garden

The stone was safely unloaded back home and stood untouched in the garden to see how it withstood the weather. I enjoyed looking at it and meditating on how it could turn into a sculpture. The stone did deteriorate a little and when we moved in 2002 to East Hagbourne it was placed in the old summer house that had been moved from our old house and renovated. It was a lovely place to work as it had a south-facing side and the sunshine would pour in on nice days throughout the year. I had as tools a big old log for resting the stone on, a chisel and a small cold chisel with a head about 1/4" wide that was easy to sharpen on my grindstone. The stone with Mo in the shed It had a pyramid shape and I began to see Mo within its boundaries. I made a small "manquette" out of Blagrove clay with about the right shape and it looked not too bad. Mo was always the model but it was always going to be stone-shaped. I wanted a bit of art not an accurate reality.

It was a pleasure to take lots of photos of the model from all different angles and lights. Some would be printed out and left around in the summerhouse as I worked. It was delightful work, working one hammer blow at a time to extract the figure I wanted from the stone. The only bad moments when I was doing the head. Thishad born the worst of the frost damage and was not of good quality. Sometimes a much larger bit came off than I had wanted. It was all a bit difficult.