Iron in the soul
Eddie Roberts has turned working with steel into an art form. Phil Penfold talks to the sculptor about his work and
remarkable journey. Main picture by Simon Hulme.
One of the first things that struck me about Eddie Roberts is that he’s very self-effacing and matter-of-fact. He’s only in his mid-40s, but his life has already been a full one and the word “varied” doesn’t even begin to cover it. His story to date – as one of Oscar Wilde’s characters once said – has been “rich in incident”. Eddie is regarded as one of the rising stars in the world of contemporary sculpture and his work (like the man himself ) is fascinating. He now lives near Pateley Bridge, and works for Harrogate Steel, based in Darley, just outside the town.
His story, though, began further north. He was born in Sunderland to a white mother and a black father and was given up for adoption. He was only a month old when John and Nikky Roberts took him into their home, and into their hearts. The couple already had a child of their own and adopted more after Eddie came along. Eddie calls them mum and dad and says they are all family.
He’s also reconnected with his birth mother and discovered that she, too, has a wider family. Eddie embraces them all. “When I finally met my birth mother for the first time it was as if a hole in my stomach was filed, and to discover that I had another family as well, was just joyous.”
Growing up as a mixed raced child in Britain during the 1980s could be challenging at times. “I grew up in rather different times to where we find ourselves now. I can’t say that I was bullied at school, that would be wrong. But I knew that there was something ‘different’, and other kids, as kids do, remarked on it. There were quite a few stares on the street, but mum and dad were always there for support and advice, and they still are. It was a typical North-East home – ‘come in, sit you down, fancy a cuppa and a slice of cake?’ The house always seemed to be full. All parents are remarkable, but looking back, they were the best ever.”
He wasn’t particularly artistically inclined as a youngster, but when he left school he decided to study art at Northumbria University. “I soon found out that it wasn’t for me,” he recalls, “but I stuck it out and I completed the course. I don’t want to disparage anyone who taught there at the time, but I didn’t like the way that what you produced was constantly being judged, it can make you become disenchanted. I wasn’t a rebel, I just questioned things all the time.”
After finishing university he worked for Sainsbury’s for six years becoming a store manager. It was his aunt, a design lecturer, who saw something in her nephew that he perhaps hadn’t seen himself. She encouraged him to go out and see the world. So he did. He joined a cruise line working in retail, a job that took him everywhere from Alaska to Australia over the next six years.
He married an Australian and moved Down Under. Sadly, the relationship didn’t last, but it was while living there that one day he thought to himself “I want to learn to weld metal”. He smiles: “I know, crackers, isn’t it? But that’s the moment that my life turned around. It was a bit of an epiphany.” He learned the basics of welding in his spare time and discovered that he had an eye for shape, form and line and began creating one-off metal sculptures, demand for which grew. “From previously using paper and plastic to shape my designs and ideas, I started using steel, and what had been a dream was now becoming