Michael BUDD
Shortlisted 2010

work shown : Grass Panel (detail)
Forged iron
(click on picture to see larger image)

Project

I need funding to further my knowledge of forge work and its more advanced techniques, and to give me the needed time to create a new body of work for a solo exhibition, based around the greater understanding of my chosen medium, hot forged Iron.

I wish to enrol in the part time forge work course at the National College of Blacksmithing, Hereford College, England. Hereford is widely recognized as being one of the best institutes for Blacksmithing in Europe ... Currently there are no courses in forge work in Ireland making it hard to train.

From this new insight into forge work I wll be creating a new body of work which I intend to become a solo exhibition. This exhibition will show my progression over two years and focus on the relationship between technique, design and creative inspiration.

Extract from Artist Statement

One of the key inspirations and fascinations for me is the journey steel takes when hot forged. Not just the outward changes in texture form and colour, visible to the eye, but the molecular journey it takes only when hot forged. It starts out as a non-ferrous metal with its molecules fairly tightly packed. Then as it is heated past its critical temperature it changes into a ferrous metal, and its crystalline structure enlarges and swells. By working it with hammer and hand, across the anvil its structure is refined and strengthened. Blows are lightened as the colour darkens through yellows, oranges and then reds, so as not to damage the increasingly hardening material as it returns to a non-ferrous metal, forging its crystals into ever smaller, more densely knitted bonds and connections until you are left with something that has not only changed in shape and form but also has a change in structure beneath.

It is the hidden depths of the forge, such as these, that have influenced my work. My work is based around strong, dynamic forms with living textures, showing the fluid nature of the materials. It has been my aim to make them tactile and to give people the compulsion to reach out and feel the textures, exploring the forms through touch just as much as by sight.

Website : http://www.michaelbudd.ie