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Ben Platts-Mills |
| Sculptor |
| Artist's
Statement |
I don’t have any special interest in trying to interpret anything by carving wood or for that matter in creating anything else. I have ideas and stories, pieces of wood and tools, which I put together to expose the wood where I think that it interprets the idea or story. Commissions are nice because they are always different. Sometimes I am given a tree and a story, sometimes just an idea and a place. Or put another way, I make things in public spaces to do with situations and places within limits set by people and materials. Using wood and metal, stone and earth, colour, canvas, fire and water, I make each of these quite particular pieces as events in themselves.
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| Biography |
Born in London to a big family I was sent to inspiring schools. I spent two years at art colleges and two years as an apprentice carving marble in Italy. On return to England I started painting pictures, living in poverty and drawing. I have lived in Suffolk since 1977, when I was 28. In 1987 the Great Storm hit Eye and I started the Eye Town Moors Woodlands project, which meant I could work in three dimensions again and learn about ‘the environment’, trees, ecology and volunteers. Now I live where I work, with three others, on a site called Heaven in the corner of a field belonging to a saw mill. Most of my work is for outdoor public spaces, done here for a particular place and then transported. Sometimes I carve a tree in situ. Recently I have been making smaller indoor pieces without a commission to fulfil.
Not long ago I attended a Landmark Forum workshop. A personal discovery programme, it made me realise that the methods we learn to use ‘enable’ us to do things that we had always thought impossible.
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| Recent commissions |
2006
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‘The Grey Whale.’ Hardings Pits in South Lynn, Kings Lynn
‘Falling Horse and Rider’, Fairstead Green, North Lynn, Kings Lynn |
2007
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Sign posts for the Little Ouse Headwaters Project. Blo Norton
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2008
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‘Kingfishers’ for Tower Homes in Sidcup, Kent
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2010
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Little Ouse Headwaters Project II, Blo Norton
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2011
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Gateway project, Hitcham, Suffolk
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| Exhibitions in 2011 |
Sept (tba) Waveney Springs, Diss
10 Sep-2 Oct - 12th Artworks annual exhibition, Blackthorpe Barn, Rougham, Bury St Edmunds
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| Contact Details |
Heaven
New Street
Coney Weston
Suffolk
IP31 1HQ
Tel: 01359 221448
Mobile: 07951 496417
Email: ben.plattmills@postoffice.co.uk
Web: www.treesculpture.co.uk
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