Creative Development - Working in Wood
My latest creative adventure has brought me back to City Lit, this time taking a wood carving course. Taught by sculptor Alexandra Harley, it is individual project based, each student firstly making a maquette and then learning how to carve their sculpture from a block of wood. Although my work has always been 3-dimensional in nature, working with wood has certainly taken me out of my textile comfort zone, and the subtractive, rather than constructive, way of working with a material requires a whole new set of skills. But I’ve loved the challenge!
‘A Delicate Line’
Small semi-abstract sculpture hand carved from lime wood.
15 x 10 x 7cm.
For my first sculpture, in the Summer 2025 term, my initial concept was to re-create in wood what could be a softly draped small bag or pouch. I knew that I wanted to tread a delicate line between solidity and fragility, strength and delicacy, and to keep a sense of fluidity and movement.
As the work slowly emerged from the block of lime, I found that it was evolving and transforming into something a little more ambiguous, which I liked, and this began to affect my creative decisions. I began to lean in to the ambiguity, rather than remain completely true to the initial idea. In particular, the female torso motif, although not consciously intentional, became quite important. Later, allowing ‘mistakes’ to occur while refining and honing the top edge, conjured thoughts of fragile and delicate rose petals evolving into antlers, often symbols of strength.
As a complete novice in wood carving, simply reacting to how the lime behaved was of course a large part of the process, and the mistakes and happy accidents that happened were perhaps the most transformational.
Alongside the wood carving, I’ve also been working on new sculptural pieces using textiles and stitch. Contrasting my aim to create lightness and fluidity in wood, here I’m exploring how to give solidity and weight to essentially soft materials.
Now, in the Winter term at City Lit, I’m working on a second sculpture, informed by some new developments in my sculpted textile pieces.