“Tom”, not “Torn”
This is a stone sculpture that I made back in around 2009, I drove past it the other day. It is in a village called Ansley in Warwickshire. I remember a meeting that I had with members of the local community to discuss potential themes for their sculpture at the time. There were so many ideas thrown at me that I decided that it would be impossible to single out any one of them to be the main theme of the sculpture. In the end, I decided to incorporate ALL of the ideas that were given to me into the sculpture, including imagery relating to ribbon weaving, coal mining, nature, the local brickworks etc. The focal point of the piece would be a young boy being torn between good and evil. This mimicked a small Norman carving which I found in the local church no bigger than a house brick. In the carving was a boy having his arms pulled by a dragon and a sheep. As a consequence, I decided that the sculpture should be called “Torn”. Unfortunately, this was misread on a number of occasions by the community as “Tom”, as they assumed this to be the name of the boy on the sculpture and the name stuck. So “Tom” it is.
Hi Graeme
I am the parish council clerk. We are discussing having your brilliant sculpture cleaned. We also plan to create a descrition of what all the reliefs ate within the stone. As there are new people arriving in the village they are wondering what it all means. I wanted to ask for advice about cleaning so we do not do any damage. I will keep you posted about our progress