Ian Patrick Palmer
Ian is a sculptor working in ceramics, metal and wood. His current cycles of work are the ever growing Working Men Cycle and the Classical Cycle, which includes large water-and-fire features.
Biography
I grew up among the ironworks and steel mills of the Black Country, and began sculpting in metal in my early teens. Later leaving the industrial wasteland for the bright skies of southern Spain, where I lived for over 20 years, I developed a love of olive wood, and have been joining wood and metal ever since. The trinity of my materials is completed by clay, in the shape of Raku, which with its metallic glazes and my home-built kilns of all shapes and sizes brings me full circle to the foundries of my youth.
Raku ceramics, metal and wood – together they allow me to explore the relationship between the man-made and nature, chance and intention.
I combine painstakingly heat-coloured copper or steel and the natural graining of old English elm, oak and yew with the chance outcomes of the raku glaze. Working in raku permits me to build my own kilns and thus take ceramic sculpting to experimental places and dimensional limits. The unpredictable nature of raku informs the eventual hard-won order of a finished piece.
