At the weekend we ran our latest sculpture course with three new students, none of whom had ever welded before – we would have had four students but Brid had to drop out so she’s coming along next month. Tim wanted to make an animal head to go on his wall and really liked the idea of making it with junk metal so he was definitely in his element rummaging through our stock and seemed to spend the whole weekend grinning. Conrad had done other arts courses before but never welded sculpture and wanted to see how his recurring theme of a fishing boat on it’s side would translate into steel (very nicely) and also found the time to make a huge sunflower for his garden. Mandy travelled down from Cumbria to take part and does stone carving from time to time but like Conrad had never welded before. She had the idea of making a sculpture which depicted three gannets soaring, diving and entering the water as a sort of moving piece for her garden all welded to a piece of 12mm round bar which was harder to bend into the right shape than we thought. On the Sunday evening we loaded the pieces into everyones cars and they drove away to show off what they’d achieved over the weekend. Thanks as always go to my fellow welding professor David Mayne (Billy) who runs the course with me and if you fancy having a go yourself we’ve got two places at the moment on our next course then none until next March.