Occasionally the student will completely not understand some of the concepts that his or her course is trying to teach. In this instance the idea of removing stone away from the image in order to make the image apparently rise up to prominence could not be grasped. So instead the image was incised into the stone. But instead of the student’s efforts being a failure, the finished piece was very effective indeed : the image of the fern became more like a natural imprint, or fossil remnant. The student was a young school boy, who showed me that there are many other ways beyond the confines of my stone carving courses for students to pursue sculptural prowess.
The stone used for this piece was rescued from a local stonemason company's skip