Friday 6 September 2013


My mum died last year after suffering for 15years with Alzheimer’s, now I have a chance of creating a headstone memorial that reflects her spirit. 
The concept of the memorial was that it was to be natural smooth flowing sculpture showing the freedom of the spirit within us. I chose the Eagle to define this free spirit, my mum loved birds of prey and Eagles so this was quite apt for her memorial.  When creating the form I wanted to protect the inscription on the face of the stone to be protected from the elements, so I inset the face and wrapped the wings of the Eagle around the face of the stone.  this meant that I was going to need a lot of stone.

I'm developing the inscription at the moment.  I will post details later.
 

Last year I took a course on stone carving with Jude Tucker, I gained a lot of confidence from the course, and after discussing the concept with Jude she agreed to help support me in creating this memorial.

 

These are my early concept pictures




This is the maquette of the headstone

 
This is one of my practice pieces, the Love Heart, here I'm practicing carving embossed and cut letters on a curved surface.



Delivery of the Portland stone from Albion Quarry Portland
 Me on the stone, just to give an idea of the size of the stone
 Starting the process of reducing the stone to the correct size
 Still at it
 Eventually later I managed to split the stone
The end of the first Day