Ian is a sculptor who combines metal, wood, and Raku ceramics to explore the interplay between the man-made and the natural.
Ian grew up among the ironworks and steel mills of the Black Country, and began sculpting in metal in his early teens. Later leaving the industrial wasteland for the bright skies of southern Spain, where he lived for over 20 years, he developed a love of olive wood, and has been joining wood and metal ever since. The trinity of his materials is completed by clay, in the shape of Raku, which with its metallic glazes and his home-built kilns of all shapes and sizes brings him full circle to the foundries of his youth.
Raku ceramics, metal and wood – together they allow Ian to explore the relationship between the man-made and nature, chance and intention.
Ian combines painstakingly heat-coloured copper or steel and the natural graining of old English elm, oak and yew with the chance outcomes of the raku glaze. Working in raku permits him to build his own kilns and thus take ceramic sculpting to experimental places and dimensional limits. The unpredictable nature of raku informs the eventual hard-won order of a finished piece.