The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
Best of British
How a lucky find in a skip led to a new lease of life
The sculptor who found inspiration in a skip
SCULPTOR GUY STEVENS was always creative as a child. ‘I was quite dyslexic, so images and 3D objects always made more sense to me,’ he recalls. ‘I was never wordy, so I focused on art.’
He grew up in Epsom, Surrey, and studied painting at the Chelsea College of Arts during the 1990s. But it took him some years to find his true calling. Following stints as a hatmaker in Italy and a builder in Brighton, he discovered sculpture, after experimenting on a piece of limestone he found in a skip.
‘I’d had enough of working for other people and so I slowly found my way with stone and it stuck,’ says Stevens, who is now 48. ‘I decided to make 100 carved stone heads, to give myself a chance to learn, and I also did relief carvings.’
Since then, he has carved stone fireplaces and hearths, as well as bowls. However, for the last 14 years, Stevens has specialised in sculptures, usually made of stone or marble and showing abstract – often organic – shapes, which he displays at exhibitions; currently his work is being shown as part of an art exhibition at Painswick Rococo Garden in Gloucestershire.
Stevens creates his sculptures in a converted cowshed in Lewes, near Brighton, and always begins by selecting the stone. ‘I enjoy working with English limestone – Purbeck is my favourite,’ he says. ‘But I have some Portuguese marble that I bought while there with friends. I didn’t have any idea what I wanted to do with it, but it’s the material that gets me thinking.
‘I then like to live with the stone for a while. Occasionally I draw on it with line-marking paint, which is like spraypaint, to see where I want to take it.’
Next he begins the rough cut, where he removes large chunks of rock using a chainsaw with a diamond blade, as well as angle grinders, electric drills, hammers and chisels.
Once he has created the desired shape, he uses an electric polisher to smooth it, then polishes the stone by hand, often using sandpaper. Sometimes he applies a sealant to protect the sculpture from becoming weathered by the elements, animals, or admiring hands. He encourages people to touch his work, ‘even though the grease on their hands can mark the stone, eventually changing the surface’.
Stevens’ sculptures can take months to complete and don’t always go to plan. ‘The mindset when carving is close to meditation... though when the stone breaks I can get angry and swear a bit,’ he admits. ‘But the beauty of stone is you can always rework it and find a new direction.’ He adds, ‘I love the freedom of what I do – it feels like playing.’
Stevens’ work is on view at Art Unbound, Painswick Rococo Garden, until 8 September; rococogarden.org.uk; guystevenssculpture.com