a list influences on my work
Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness.
Edith Sitwell
Many things and people have influenced me. Some of these can be found in the links section of the site. This is a completely non-exhaustive list, jotted down in no order whatsoever.
- Wilf Lunn: English eccentric, builder of strange machines with spurious uses, cyclist and one of my childhood heroes.
- Stig of the Dump: a book in which a boy falls down into a rubbish dump and discovers a caveman living there. The caveman builds all his modern conveniences from the discarded waste of everyone else. I still love this book, which I read again recently. (Stig of the Dump, Clive King, pub. Puffin Modern Classics, 1993. ISBN: 0140364501)
- John Cage: too well known to need any biographical comment from me. His use of "things" stuck into a piano's strings to modify the sounds is an idea which has gripped and compelled me since I first heard about it as a child.
- Tim McCreight: writer of the finest technical manuals on jewellery. His books are brilliant and written in such a way that he makes you want to try out the techniques he describes. The techniques are also described accurately, which is more than can be said for some jewellery "manuals".
- Frank Gehry: the early works made in the shanty-style. His later work is wonderful, but doesn't excite me like the earlier stuff.
- Childrens' TV in the 70's: not that I was a TV addict or anything, but there was something innately creative about 1970's childrens' TV, something that encouraged you to get out there and try making stuff, even if it might not work too well. All that sticky-backed plastic...
- Ramona Solberg: the first example I saw of fine, contemporary jewellery made from recycled junk was by this woman. I never looked back.
- Rob Jackson: An article by Mr Jackson set me off on the course of working with rusty steel, thus onto the current series.
- Jan Svankmeyer