2002
I was commissioned to cast the summit of the mountain, an icon of Wales’ national identity. I went to the summit and cast a small section of it; from the cast I made a model in unfired clay. Housed in a glass vitrine, it creates its own microclimate, representing the climatic experiences of the mountain. The piece refers to the mountains origins, as it began as clay on the seabed, and through igneous and metamorphic activity over millions of years it became the mountain we see today. In this sense it is a compression of geologic time. Through the miniaturisation of the mountain the viewer is placed into the position of the omnipresent giant, scanning the ancient and sublime mountain in its entirety in one glance.
