{"id":863,"date":"2014-10-16T13:05:19","date_gmt":"2014-10-16T13:05:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/?page_id=863"},"modified":"2014-12-19T11:18:34","modified_gmt":"2014-12-19T11:18:34","slug":"first-sculpture","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/?page_id=863","title":{"rendered":"First Sculpture"},"content":{"rendered":"

(photo of portraits of Maggie and me facing each-other)<\/p>\n

I had longed for years to make sculpture. When I was about 10, some school friends and I had once\u00a0dug handfuls of\u00a0clay from a ditch. I shaped my clay into\u00a0a flat disc and\u00a0added\u00a0a face in profile, like a coin. I can still remember the\u00a0exciting impact\u00a0of the\u00a0three-dimensional shapes\u00a0swelling up from the background. Six years or so later, I was very proud of\u00a0a small\u00a0seated female\u00a0nude I modelled from imagination,\u00a0using some clay from the school’s Pottery Club. Without an armature to support the\u00a0wet clay,\u00a0it cracked apart as\u00a0it dried. But this\u00a0had fed my desire to make sculpture, one day.<\/p>\n

(press clipping: ‘Heads it’s Bernard’)<\/p>\n

That day arrived in 1970\u00a0when\u00a0I went to teach in Wolverhampton, where I was lucky to find a thriving Adult Education sculpture class taught by\u00a0Charlie Ward, who had been\u00a0a coalminer to the age of 43.\u00a0Taught by sculptor\u00a0Ron Dutton, he had become an evangelist for the art of\u00a0sculpture.\u00a0We learned\u00a0how to\u00a0stop\u00a0our masterpieces in wet clay from collapsing under their own weight, how to take plaster of Paris\u00a0moulds from the clay, and how\u00a0make\u00a0castings. I made a number of family portraits, and Charlie\u00a0called the local paper to the annual class exhibition.<\/p>\n

\"sculptural<\/a>

Leaping Form (1972) Sculptural Relief cast in Glass Reinforced Polyester Resin (GRP) xx x xx x xx ins (xx x xx x xx cms)<\/p><\/div>\n

I wanted to experiment with a larger scale, and,\u00a0working at home, made “Leaping Form”, a\u00a0relief sculpture to be hung\u00a0overlooking the stairs in\u00a0our house. I modelled it\u00a0in clay, made a mould in\u00a0plaster of Paris and made my first casting in\u00a0Glass Reinforced Polyester resin (GRP).\u00a0Two years later, I used the same the materials I used to cast my ‘Mask of Solzhenitsyn’<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Pregnant<\/a>

Maggie Pregnant no. 3 (1974) Painted Plaster of Paris (Half Life-size) Height 56 cms (22 ins)<\/p><\/div>\n

Before that, I had\u00a0made a life-sized portrait of my wife Margaret, pregnant with our first child, an image inspired by Rembrandt’s drawings and paintings of his wife,\u00a0Saskia. This, and two half-life-sized sculptures of\u00a0\u00a0her pregnant, marked the\u00a0beginning of my series of work on Birth and Family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(photo of portraits of Maggie and me facing each-other) I had longed for years to make sculpture. When I was about 10, some school friends and I had once\u00a0dug handfuls of\u00a0clay from a ditch. I shaped my clay into\u00a0a flat … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":75,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"onecolumn-page.php","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/863"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=863"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":984,"href":"https:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/863\/revisions\/984"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/75"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}