Urchins

Fascinated by my newly acquired 'Sputnik' sea urchin. Did some drawings of it for a friend's 40th birthday present, marvelling at it's splendid decoration. Sea-mine meets Jules Verne/HG Wells. My sketchbook is filling up with ideas, as I now intend to make a series of moulds and cast multiples of the urchin and then use metal powders to give them an aged oxidised copper coating. These will then be stacked in a dark wooden crate on glass shelves. I'm supposed to be busy casting mole's paws and octopus tentacles for a new work to go to a show in Bath in July but I'm now enthusiastically distracted by my urchin ideas. The plates of the urchin seem unlike shells and other related forms with the five sections interlocking and the patterning not as perfectly organised as you might expect. Reminded of the countless occasions that I have carefully grappled with an urchin shell, or 'test', whilst diving only to get it back into the boat in broken pieces. Also my delight as a child when finding rare fossilised urchins in the builder's gravel in the yard and then arranging them in pride of place within my 'museum in my bedroom cupboard'.