The sculptor Tom Millard will be taking part in this years Made in Kings Heath Open Studio Art Trails. Tom will be showing his work from his home studio at 21 Tenbury Road.
Tom has predominantly worked with clay for the past twenty years. He now models and constructs with a variety of materials in a new studio dedicated to multimedia, returning to his earlier engagement with constructivism and kinetics.
We asked him about his his inspiration and creative process…
What do you create? Sculpture, modelled and constructed; and, photography.
What materials do you use? At the moment, wood. Colour/Form but I also a have kiln and much experience with ceramics.
Where do you create your work? Mostly studio based [in Kings Heath, Birmingham], but also on location in North Devon, See, ‘Weather over Lundy.’
Where do you draw your Inspiration from? The Edge of Land and Sea. Edge – (My favourite word! ) In the present context, I am inspired by the sheer exhilaration of walking with the sea on one side and land on the other. Everything is changing, constantly. Change defined by season, weather, land form, eg The passage from granite to slate in Cornwall. Chalk to limestone in Dorset.
How would you describe your creative process? I really don’t want to know or to be over analytical. Its a very precious and venerable flame; Follow the hunch. Don’t plan ahead but learn from where you’ve been.
Which aspect(s) of your work do you enjoy most? That dawning awareness that something new and exciting is happening in the creative process.
Who has inspired and influenced you as an artist? . Varies with time and project. Caro, Brancusi. Lanyon. GiorgioEE e EEne.
Peter Lanyon – For the celebration of Cornish light, colour and weather.
Caro, for me, a revolutionary exploration of form and colour.
Dan Flavin. Light and colour. “What you see is what you get – there ain’t anything else”
I am not influenced, directly, by Giorgione but La Tempesta is a great favourite of mine – a wonderful depiction colour and that weird light heralding a thunderstorm.
Have you always been worked as an artist and how did you start out I’ve always been a Sculptor and ceramicist. All began studying at Redland College in Bristol
Where do you exhibit and sell your work? Through galleries and exhibition, sales are mostly off the back of exhibitions and projects promoted by galleries and institutions eg Arts Council of England, Arts Council of Scotland, The Whitechapel Gallery. University of Minnesota. RBSA.
What have been some recent or favourite projects you have undertaken?
‘The South West Coast Path’ An over-arching project of the last decade or so has been a body of sculpture, mostly ceramic, inspired by a 600 mile journey on foot around the coast of my native west- country.
‘The Journey is in the Art, The Art is in the Journey’ Source material; Standing stones, Stone circles, Sand-ripple patterns. The wreck of the Johanna on the notorious Hartland Point .
What are you currently work on? I am spending lots of time designing and equipping a new Studio dedicated as a multi-media 3D Experimental Workshop.
And whats next…?
“Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed….. ”
Ted Hughes, The Stink of Fox
Made in Kings Heath 