Mother And Child

T his life size bronze statue was commissioned by Lambeth Palace, London for the Palace's newly renovated gardens. Lambeth Palace is home to the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was specifically designed to be on a slightly raised plinth at one end of an avenue of flowers. The child was reaching out to another statue of a child at the other end of the avenue. Later it was decided that the statue should be on the lawn at ground level.

The original piece was built in clay outdoors under a temporary large lean to. Geese were kept in the gardens where I was working. Each morning when I arrived for work, the geese would have torn away the plastic covering on the statue and nibbled the toes. Before I did anything else I had to remodel the toes. The time it took to remodel them became shorter and shorter, but there was no way of keeping these tenacious nibblers from their morning ritual. Thankfully they didn't attempt to untie the rest of the clay figure.