Inspiring Shapes

The Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence in the South of France is just extraordinary. It’s so beautiful because, of all the original drawings that Matisse did, those of the crucifixion in charcoal are incredible. You then have the most amazing priest’s robes, which are beautifully embroidered, and then he designed this extraordinary stained glass windows and it’s just amazing. Very small, very intimate, but fabulous.

When I started out as an art student I had three weeks in America. I travelled to New York and went to the Guggenheim Museum. That’s when I just fell in love with architecture and buildings. I remember walking up this helix and suddenly finding myself at the top and realising what genius it was. I can recall looking down the amazing vistas of steps like it was yesterday. Stunning.

Eye-catching...

I’ve discovered this company called 3form who produce a really interesting range of products. For example they’ll take a piece of fabric and trap it in resin – laminate it. What’s incredible about this is of course when you start to light it, it does extraordinary things. One of the great things about it is that a lot of it is recyclable, which I really like - it’s very environmentally friendly. It gets even more interesting when they laminate grass reeds or chrome film which reflects the light. If you put coloured lights behind it all sorts of things happen. They’ve got a whole gallery so you can go and just pick a sheet of two metre by one metre or whatever.

It’s a very versatile and interesting material and in fact I’m thinking of using it at one of the Oasis Academies based in Oldham. The cotton industry in Oldham was massive and we want to bring the history of Oldham into the academy. We found that in this product range you can actually compress cotton flowers into the resin. So we can have a cotton resin panel that actually hangs in the reception area. It will just be decorative but there will be a historical poignancy to it.

See some of our work using 3form materials.