Nebula 1

This sculpture evolved as a happy accident. To protect the base of my forge from overheating I placed a square sheet of 3mm steel underneath the coke beans, the hot core of the fire, a ball of burning coke. I dug out the steel sheet and discovered that the heat from several weeks of forging had burned a hole in the metal.

I took a long hard look at the catastrophic effect and marvelled at the beauty created by the heat of the hot core. The forge will probably reach a maximum temperature of about 1,927°C (3,500°F). Hot, in anyone’s terms.

At the same time as I was thinking of what to do with the incinerated sheet of steel Tim Peake was about to return to earth in a ‘baked bean can’ (The Soyuz capsule) with temperatures outside reaching more than 1,600°C (2,910°F) I thought about the dangers of space – the final frontier, the bravery that Tim and his fellow astronauts endure. So I dedicate the sculpture to Tim and all the brave astronauts that push the bounds of discovery, endurance and science.