After my foray into the art world last Friday, I've been thinking about sculpture today.
A lady called Jilly Sutton has been in touch - she's got an exhibition on at the moment called Family Trees.
The idea for this project using elm trees came to her, she says, when she was rowing down the river Dart in Devon counting young dead elms on a neighbour's farm.
"I was thinking how they should be growing up to be the tall handsome trees they used to be - but are now doomed with the fatal Dutch elm disease," she explains.
"Then I thought of my tall handsome dad who suffers from dementia and total memory loss - and in a similar sort of way is also still looking good but his life is doomed as well.
"He was a nurseryman and always very keen on the family tree - and so I got going on digging up these dead trees and standing them on their own roots in the studio, decorating them all in ways that showed family stuff..."
A group of seven Elm trees, plus other sculptures, are now on show at the Rebecca Hossack Gallery in London.
Jilly is well known for her monumental sculpted heads - and her lime-wood portrait of poet Andrew Motion is in the National Portrait Gallery.


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