SCULPTOR Stephen Hitchin is so dedicated to his work that he once spent a summer camping in a Staffordshire stone quarry. This was back in 1975, when there were plans for Liverpool Polytechnic to move into the dilapidated Albert Dock.
Hitchin, then an art student, was commissioned to create a work for the new site.
“It was a large carving and the only way for me to do it was to work in the quarry,” he says.
“I had just got married so I couldn’t spent all my time there and I cycled down each week.
“I still have a photo of my bike and the tent with the sun coming up.”
Although the Polytechnic’s move was usurped by the creation of Tate Liverpool and the Merseyside Maritime Museum, Hitchen continues to make large-scale public works, including commissions for Liverpool Women’s Hospital, Birkenhead Station, Queens Square and Calderstones Park.
His new exhibition at the University of Liverpool’s Victoria Gallery & Museum is a rare opportunities for visitors to feast their eyes on some of his smaller pieces.
The sculptures are displayed alongside his preliminary drawings and photographs of work in practice.
Carved from different types of white stone, they are beautiful in their contrasts – smooth versus dappled surfaces, freeform curves set against angular lines.
Hitchin works with an angle grinder, but is currently looking into more updated methods, and is concerned with the fragility of the human body and the passage of time: “I always find that I’m most able to fulfil my ambitions for a work when it’s in stone,” says Hitchin, who leads the BA Fine Art programme at Wirral Arts School.
“It goes from being very physical in the early stages to more delicate when finishing the pieces towards the end.”
As Long as it Takes, a reference to the length of time involved in creating an individual work, features a selection of sculptures made in the past two years.
Two works by Hitchin can also be viewed at the University’s Cedar House, where they are permanently installed.
STEPHEN HITCHIN’S exhibition, As Long as it Takes, opens at the VGM, Brownlow Hill, Liverpool, today, and runs until January 30.
