Morning Walk

I’m in the cathedral close where there is a huge exhibition of Sophie Ryder’s sculptures. They are in the close, the cloisters and the cathedral itself. They are enormous, anywhere else they would dwarf their surroundings, but here they are of sufficient size to interact with the giant that is the cathedral.
I discover the hands blew over and were damaged in the recent storm and have been replaced by the feet. The hands have been unlucky from the start, originally placed over one of the paths leading to the cathedral doors they were moved on health and safety grounds because people kept bumping into them while texting! Now they’ve gone altogether, rather sad, I liked them.

Of all the sculptures my favourite is ‘Rising’ a giant hare who comes complete with her inner child, who like the one who lives inside all of us is sometimes easy to miss or forget about.

Sophie uses her lurcher dogs as inspiration for her sculptures and this picture of her with two of them was taken after she had taken part in a conversation at the Salisbury Arts Festival.