Artist

Confrontation is something that I accept as part of the project though not its purpose.

Stones are checked every so often to see if any have split or at worst exploded. An explosion can leave debris in the elements so the firing has to be abandoned.

Fire is the origin of stone. By working the stone with heat, I am returning it to its source.

I did tests on small stones before collecting and committing myself to the larger ones.

I soon realised that what had happened on a small scale cannot necessarily be repeated on a larger scale. The stones were so big that the amount of heat required was prohibitively expensive and wasteful.

Once the fired stone is out of the kiln, it is still possible to mentally reconstruct it in its original form.

People also leave presence in a place even when they are no longer there.

People do not realise that many of my works are done in urban places. I was brought up on the edge of Leeds, five miles from the city centre-on one side were fields and on the other, the city.

My art is an attempt to reach beyond the surface appearance. I want to see growth in wood, time in stone, nature in a city, and I do not mean its parks but a deeper understanding that a city is nature too-the ground upon which it is built, the stone with which it is made.

Ideas must be put to the test. That's why we make things, otherwise they would be no more than ideas. There is often a huge difference between an idea and its realisation. I've had what I thought were great ideas that just didn't work.

I am not a performer but occasionally I deliberately work in a public context. Some sculptures need the movement of people around them to work.

Occasionally I have come across a last patch of snow on top of a mountain in late May or June. There's something very powerful about finding snow in summer.

Abandoning the project was incredibly stressful after having gone through the process of building the room, installing the kiln, collecting the stones, sitting with the kiln day and night as it came to temperature, experiencing the failures.

The reason why the stone is red is its iron content, which is also why our blood is red.

Even in winter an isolated patch of snow has a special quality.

The first snowball I froze was put in my mother's deep freeze when I was in my early 20s.

Three or four stones in one firing will all react differently. I try to achieve a balance between those that haven't progressed enough and those about to go too far.

Some of the snowballs have a kind of animal energy. Not just because of the materials inside them, but in the way that they appear caged, captured.

I'm cautious about using fire. It can become theatrical. I am interested in the heat, not the flames.

The stones tear like flesh, rather than breaking. Although what happens is violent, it is a violence that is in stone. A tear is more unnerving than a break.