Changes

My mother-in-law has instructed me to write a new blog as she's tired of waiting for an update. Apart from being flattered that she's interested, I think it's fair exchange for lending me her entire kitchen floor as a layout pad, her light box, pencils, pens and oldest son for the day while I designed a new section of landscape for the enamels.

When this project started, I thought I had things stitched up - all the panels designed, planned, consigned to individual template sheets and ready for production - I'd been two years in the preparation after all. You can tell it's my first public art project and I have stumbled into it a complete innocent as it has now become obvious that lots can change, change and change again.

The main change has been in the actual contours of the cladding: what used to be areas of smooth curves now have doglegs and bends, doors and differing levels. While I have the comparatively easy task of redesigning a few areas of artwork, it's the project managers, steel workers, sprayers and furnace men that have had to get their heads and the sheet metal around these new curves and bends. For them this has meant building jigs and special firing platforms, making doors for the first time ever and generally going about things in entirely new ways.

If you see this finished artwork in all its glory, take some time to look at the panels themselves and their construction - there's an awful lot of thought, invention and cooperation in them which is just as skilful and, in its way, creative as anything I've done for this project.