Creatures brought to life in wire
Yorkshire artist Chris Moss captures the natural movement and expressions of animals in her lifelike wire sculptures
APACK of five ethereal hounds are poised on the rolling green lawn of a house in the hamlet of Asenby, North Yorkshire. One has his front paw raised and ears cocked, another sniffs the ground inquisitively. The other three gather expectantly, haunches braced, as if ready to take flight. But these dogs are not flesh and blood. They are life-sized mesh and wire sculptures, combining anatomical accuracy with grace and elegance. These creatures are the work of artist Chris Moss. She carefully studies the musculature and proportions of her subjects before replicating their frame in her garden studio. After a small piece of her work was displayed in a gallery, interest took off. She now sculpts animals of all shapes and sizes, from tiny delicate birds to a large flock of sheep. “I started out making small wire sculptures of horses as a way of winding down from a busy job,” she explains. “Although I gained a degree in fine art painting, I’d laid it to one side and worked in organisational roles for more than 20 years. I found that I needed to do something creative in my spare time, and I wanted to try something new. “I’d always sewed, knitted, embroidered and done woodwork, but it was when I bought some wire with the intention of making a small papier mâché horse that I found a new medium. Handling the wire was a turning point. I never got as far as the newspaper covering of my model.”
Starting point
Chris had always loved horses. “As a young girl, I never had a pony of my own, but I spent hours staring longingly at them. Something must have imprinted in my brain, and that’s why it seemed the most natural place to start.” After completing a few small sculptures, she approached a gallery in Harrogate, where she was living at the time. They offered to display a piece. “It sold, and I made some more and started to get better,” she recalls. “I wanted to try other things, so I branched out and made some different animals. In 2012, we adopted a rescue greyhound, and I became very taken with his lithe and athletic shape. He was the catalyst for everything that has happened since.” A full-time artist for two years now, her studio is a converted garage. Working slowly and steadily for at least six hours at a time helps her build momentum as she listens to classical CDs or tunes into the radio. If it is cold, she lights the wood-burning stove which she and her husband, Eric, had installed when they moved here in July 2016. Her desk is surrounded by open shelves, stacked with boxes of recycled metal, such as old barbecue grills or pieces of chain mail which often find their way into her smaller sculptures of birds. Her tools, including pliers and tin snips, are placed within easy reach. “Sometimes I like to work outside if the weather is good. Natural daylight is preferable because the small cells that make up the wire can create an optical illusion and cause ‘mesh blindness’ if I spend too
much time working indoors,” she explains. The rural surroundings are an inspiration. “The River Swale runs through the bottom of our garden, and I love to observe the birdlife that abounds there, including kingfishers, herons, goosanders and little egrets. The bigger skies and the sense of space have opened up all sorts of possibilities. It’s not just the physical space to be able to make the larger pieces, but psychologically it feels great too.”
Building up size
It takes 10 days to a fortnight to make a dog, and each of the sighthounds in her pack stands from 30-40in (76cm-1m) tall. She begins by studying photographs from reference books, paying particular attention to the proportions of the dog and how its muscle groups work. “This gives me an idea of the underlying framework,” she says. Using 1mm galvanised steel wire from a hardware store, a small model, known as a maquette, is made. “It takes 20 minutes to an hour to produce one, and I use my fingers to mould the wire. Occasionally, I may need some small pliers to twist or turn a piece, but it’s pretty malleable, and I can usually do it by hand,” she says. “This is when I work out the dog’s stance and where its weight will fall. It’s just like drawing in 3D. If I am making several dogs together, the maquettes help me to see how they will relate to each other. I am trying to achieve a certain dynamism in the pack.” Once Chris has made her decisions, she works out the upsized proportions so she can translate the model into a fullsized dog. “Sometimes, I will obtain precise measurements from a friend’s dog,” she explains, having lost her own beloved greyhound in 2016. Before the sculpting with chicken wire begins, a metal frame is created, called an armature. “This is the bones of the dog,” she says. Metal rods are welded together, starting with a
“Thus severall Figures, severall Motions take .... But Figure, Matter, Motion, all is one, Can never separate, not be alone.” Margaret Cavendish, ‘Motion and Figure’
long piece to form the spine. Four simple single rods are added for the legs and a short length for the animal’s neck. “I had to learn to weld when I decided to start making larger pieces,” she says. “I tried enrolling on a car welding class, but it was just 11 men and me. They must have wondered what on earth I was doing there. I am not particularly machine minded, and it was a disaster.” Eventually, she enrolled on a series of weekend courses, which were run by two artist designers. A small Metal Inert Gas (MIG) welder is used to heat the rods to melting point so they can be joined together. Then it is time to fill out the shape of the dog. “I think of it as a bit like wrapping air,” she says. “The dogs appear slightly ethereal and transient. They are not solid.”
Taking shape
The chicken wire comes in honeycomb weave in three sizes of cells, measuring ½in (13mm), 1in (26mm) and 2in (50mm). “I usually go for the smallest sized mesh, as I know exactly how it behaves,” explains Chris. A stack of small pieces of chicken wire are cut into irregular square and rectangular shapes using heavy duty tin snips, called aviators. “They cut straight through the wire as if it’s fabric.”
To build up the body of the dog, she works outwards, overlapping the pieces of mesh. The first are manipulated onto the armature and sometimes held with wire until being covered by subsequent layers. “I don’t start with the legs or the head; I tend to work homogenously, going up and down and round the animal. If I don’t do this, I find that the proportions can go wrong,” she says. To fix one piece to another, she snips open the cells so she has loose ends for attaching. Seven to 10 layers of wire are applied to each dog. The final two layers are treated as a casing. “I take more care over these last layers, turning in all the sharp ends. I want to achieve a very rigid structure,” she explains. “The legs in particular have to be tight enough to support the body.” Her work is all about shape, contour and movement. “I get the excitement and the buzz from working out the original idea and how I am going to fabricate the anatomy of the animal. That’s the value in it,” she says. “If the process was too quick, it would be too easy. For me, it’s the labour that is the rewarding part.”