Traditionally at the end of an art degree you have your final show, a chance to show three years of process and growth in you own style. For the artist, the work had already made a firm root in wood sculpture with a piece show prior called ‘Threshold’ (2019), a large gateway turned from Eucalyptus.

Inspired by the idea of the totemic figure, the work focused on the central post with differing symmetrical wings or fans. Grouping the sculptures as a three and three different heights gives the impression of characters of wood. Looking at the ideas used in totems across the world as signifiers or identities for the people that inhabit around them.

Green Oak was the choice of material for the artist, traditionally used in timber framing for houses, oak as a timber has beautiful grain, lots of character plus when green is allowed to move and settle over time. Stickland approaches the idea of the wood still moving and working alongside the artist to create uncontrolled changes to the finished work like shakes or drying cracks in the grain of timber and if left to the elements the eventual greying of oak over a period of exposes to the elements.

The works now stand at Black Shed Flower Farm, Sherborne, Dorset