The Face of Reading 2016
I am a stone sculptor and I want to produce the finest stone portrait of the person who to me best represents our town of Reading. The Face of Reading 2016 is my contribution to, and will be an ever-lasting legacy of Reading's Year of Culture 2016.
Who is, or who should represent what was going on in Reading in 2016? Kate Winslet, Mike Oldfield, Chris Tarrant, Ricky Gervais? Do we ever see these people in the Harris Arcade or Smelly Alley?
But beggars are everywhere and the bedding materials of the homeless are always in dozens of town centre shop doorways. It's a shameful situation, and worthy of an artist's attention. And to my mind it's important to represent these people in stone for future generations to ponder over. So I am carving the bust of a gentleman who has often been homeless and who sits on the floor in Reading’s Broad Street every day of his life, and has done so for more than a decade. He’s become well known in the town. He is my ‘Face of Reading 2016’ and is my contribution to the town’s Year of Culture in 2016. I rather like the irony of one of our town's street people being represented by a work as technically accomplished as the nationally important Royal Academy portraits of the nation’s great and the good.
But first I need the stone. A fine marble or flawless Portland limestone approx £1000 (in the meantime I'm producing a practice piece in cheap sandstone).
Then I need time. 2 year's sculpting stone is hungry work, but £20/week is all I need to keep me fed during this time.
Once that's done we can sell the portrait and maybe you should send suggestions as to who should benefit from the proceeds. 100% of the proceeds from the sale will go to a charity or charities that deal(s) with homelessness in our town.
That's all it takes for us to leave something valuable to posterity.
You can see the work as it progresses here http://mcalistairhood.artweb.com/works-in-progress
or drop into the Uni at Redlands Road