Slate Sculptures by Stephen Kettle
Stephen Kettle,
born in Castle Bromwich Birmingham in 1966, is a British sculptor who
works exclusively with slate. After leaving school, Stephen served seven
years in the Royal Navy and left the service in 1989 to work in his
Fathers construction business. It was during the following 15 years that
Stephen honed his skills that he now employs in his sculptures, using
techniques that were passed to him from his Father and a host of other
tradesmen along the way.
Stonework
is the core of his identity with each piece of slate touching its
neighboring slate on both sides as well as from above and below.
Although the slate is held together with an adhesive (that is of his own
invention), none of the adhesive is visible due to the tightness and
accuracy of the stonework. This is no mean feat as the majority of
slates are of different thicknesses and are seldom perfectly flat.
His
works range from miniature to monumental with both figurative and
abstract pieces in Museums and private collections and are viewed by
over three million people each year. His best known works are statues of
R.J. Mitchell (designer of the legendary Spitfire which is now owned
and permanently displayed at the London Science Museum) and Alan Turing,
mathematician, wartime code breaker and intellectual parent of the
computer. The Alan Turing statue is permanently housed at Bletchley Park
where it has gained much media attention in recent years. Kettle also
has a bust of Winston Churchill in the Darrah /Harwood collection at the
same site.
