Farming, Creativity and Bronze Sculpture With Rodney Munday

In today’s interview, I speak with Rodney Munday, whose bronze sculpture can be found up and down the UK including The Minster Church of St Andrew, PlymouthOxford and Cambridge University and Chichester and Worthing Hospitals to name only a few.

Rodney and I came across one another when he needed some advice about preventive conservation on his upcoming commission for St John The Baptist Church in Cirencester. As soon as I looked at his work, I was hooked and immediately made it my business to find out more about him.

I began our conversation today by asking, if he’d always been creative?

Rodney Munday: Well, my creative journey really goes back as long as I can remember. I’ve always drawn and as a child, I used to make little plasticine figures. And when I first went to school, I was given some little plaster molds for pushing plasticine into for taking…demolding little bits of sculpture really and that memory has always stuck with me and I think when I started making molds for my own work, that all came back. So yes, it’s been a long journey.

Lucy Branch: Was it always going to be your profession or did life take you in another direction first?

Rodney Munday: I suppose life’s taken me in a lot of different directions. When I was up to the age of about 11, I thought I’d be a writer and from then on, I wanted to be an artist. But I only really thought about painting because I went to a very good school, art wise. While I was doing A level, I was doing life drawing with professional models every week, but I hadn’t done any three-dimensional work though the teacher there told me that I drew like a sculptor. I went to art school but I gave up after a week for all sorts of reasons, really, but one I think was perhaps that it came as a bit of a disappointment after the education that I had at school. Then I thought that I needed to make up my mind quickly because for one thing, at that age, three years is a long time ahead of you. I felt that I needed to make a decision as to what I was going to do and I went back to school and it was just in time to take the Oxford entrance exam. I then read English for three years and one of my main tutors was a sculptor which was interesting.

Lucy Branch: Well, that sounds to me like it was meant to be. There’s no way around it.

Rodney Munday: I continued to draw and paint and started sculpting after I left Oxford really. Most of my time was taking up farming because I was born on a farm and that was my profession for a long time. The sculpture just crept in and somebody at one point suggested that I did some craft fairs and I happened to attach myself to a craft fair which was at the Hampton Court Flower Show and while

I was in the craft tent my wife was going around the show and she said, “There are some real sculptors out there. That’s where you should really be.”

So I saw them and we did Hampton Court the next year and said, “How about the Chelsea Flower Show?” And they said, “Oh, well, there’s an eight-year waiting list for that,” but I managed to get into that a year later. I did the RHS Shows for 10 years which gave me a worldwide clientele really. So that was how…

Lucy Branch: It began as a side endeavour? It wasn’t your main livelihood at the time? You were just doing little bits in the background at home?

Rodney Munday: That’s right. That’s right, yes. So it was lovely when it took off and actually…it took off at the time that farming went into decline. Sometimes I find the art goes into decline.

Lucy Branch: Well, I think everything ebbs and flows, doesn’t it?

Rodney Munday: It’s handy to have both there. I mean, I don’t do much in the way of farming now. We have a very small family farm and most of the work is out to contract, but we do haymaking and we do a little bit of straw for thatching using old machines.

Lucy Branch: I was thinking there’s definitely something about not asking too much of your creative self sometimes. If you are needing money from it, I think sometimes it puts the muse or the joy of it under too much pressure. Somehow things don’t seem to work when you’re trying to force them to happen. But, it sounds like an evolution for you and when that road takes you there, it’s often much luckier in some ways. It’s almost like the muse wants to help you as opposed to when you’re demanding of it.

Rodney Munday: Well, I think that is absolutely right. I think with regard to the muse, it’s not something you can pursue.

It’s rather more like the wind that bloweth where it listet hand you have to be open to it. But if you actually chase it, it’s like happiness. that’s not the way to achieve it.

Lucy Branch: I think it’s Elizabeth Gilbert, the writer. She tells a fantastic anecdote in her biography about writing and she has this thing about snakes and how sometimes a creation, it’s a snake that is disappearing into a hole and you have to grab it by the tail and force it out. And others slither right past you and sort of wink. I just thought that is such a lovely analogy that some don’t want to be there and you have to wrestle with them. So funny. I didn’t realize that you’d had such a great education from Oxford in English, but when I was reading about you, what you’d written about your sculptures, it’s actually very literary,  particularly the way that you write. So, that never tempted you either? You haven’t thought to yourself, “Maybe I’ll put the sculpture to one side for a year or so and dabble in a bit of writing?”

Rodney Munday: Well, I write what used to be called coterie poetry. So I write poems really just for people I know and for myself but I do write the odd thing. When I was farming, I wrote a few articles for “Farmers Weekly” and I’ve written some articles on arts. Recently for “The Jackdaw.” I don’t know if you’ve come across it. It’s a slightly strange, odd magazine.

Fallow Deer © Rodney Munday

Lucy Branch: I haven’t but I’m going to be checking it out now.

Rodney Munday: Some time ago I wrote an article which really sets out the way I think about art, I suppose, which I called “The Myth of the Artist” for “The Salisbury Review.”

Lucy Branch: Oh, fantastic.

Rodney Munday:  I’m thinking actually with my current commission that I’ve got of possibly producing a book. It’s for the church at Cirencester and to place what I am doing within the historical context of Christian art which is an interesting one, I think.

Lucy Branch: Is it a particular interest for you, Christian bronze sculpture?

Rodney Munday: Yes, I think probably for a number of reasons. One is that I love above all else dealing with the human form. I mean, I like animals. I like anything that lives and moves but the human form is an animal form but also, it’s one with which it is possible for me to relate directly because I’m a person. One of the things about religious art is that it almost inevitably involves you in the human form so that is one thing that I like about it.

Another thing that I like is usually the people who are commissioning it to the churches, they’re good because they have an idea of what they want and this is true I think of private commissioners as well. It doesn’t mean that they’re putting you under pressure to do something the way they want it, but they have an idea of what they want whereas a lot of commissions that come onto the market, especially those which have to do with development are the result of things like 106 agreements where there is an obligation for the person producing the development to have produced a piece of art work to go with it. Because of that, they have no idea at all of what they want but they’ve got money to get rid of. So they write these briefs which are usually a load of drivel and they encourage the artist to write drivel in response, I think.

Lucy Branch: Oh, that’s so funny. One other thing is a committee decision. I have a lot of similar problems with tenders for projects where I can tell immediately you read it that the poor person who’s been put in charge of it has never…they’ve never even looked at a piece of bronze. They’re not really sure what they’re doing and they’ve had to write something that anyone who knows even the tiniest little bit thinks, “Oh, no. What are you asking for? It’s madness.” But it’s annoying as well because it doesn’t make being able to fulfill the brief easy in those circumstances because having a knowledgeable client means you can actually deliver a better product in the end for them. So I sympathize with that.

Rodney Munday: Yes. And the other thing, of course, is that you are then able to have a rapport.

Lucy Branch: Yes.

Rodney Munday: Which you can’t have otherwise.

I think is terribly important because if you have a relationship with the person you’re producing something for, it’s a two-way thing then. As one of the desert fathers said, “The human soul is like a wood shaving, coiled around its inner emptiness.” And I think anyone who actually spends a lot of time on their own finds that you do need input from outside because there isn’t that much inside of a person really. You can get through it fairly quickly.

Lucy Branch: Absolutely. I think you’re quite right. I often think to myself, “I should be thinking much deeper thoughts in life than I actually am.” I don’t admit it very often but I quite often catch my thinking being very lightweight.

Rodney Munday: This is the thing. I mean, you can have some good thoughts but, in the end, you run out of them.

Lucy: Yes.

Rodney Munday: And you need to have input from outside, I think.

Lucy: Yeah.

Rodney Munday: The other thing with religious, church art, religious art is that if there is anything that you are involved…that you can actually get involved in yourself, if it’s something is important to you, you’re likely to produce something that’s better and that doesn’t matter whether it’s just something which is beautiful or whether it has to do with social justice or whether it has to do with religion. Anything that actually involves you because it is important to you, then it has value.

Lucy Branch: Yeah, and much more inspiring to create as well. You’re getting much more energy from something like that, I think. I like the idea as well,…from the conservation point of view, I like the fact that this relationship that you are able to strike up with the client that really is invested and knows what they want. It’s much better for the object in the long run as well because they’re much more likely to look after it properly and not just walk away. It’s not just a development, a box they had to tick and then they’re off onto the next project which needs something else fulfilling. They’ve got that long-term view, just the way you hope that they will, because at some point, you have to pass it over and that’s such a lot of work that you’ve done and invested in it.

Rodney Munday: Yes. I think that is absolutely true and it’s lovely when you see that it does actually come to mean something for people.

Lucy Branch: Do you get to see the involvement that the community eventually has with the statue?

Rodney Munday: Well, yes. That’s the case. I mean, I found that in the bronze sculptures I’ve done for churches, they’ve usually wanted me to come and give talks while it’s been ongoing. And demonstrations in schools too which is good. Then afterwards for the work at the Plymouth Minister, the maquette was given…I gave it to the church and they then have sent it around different schools. The first school it went to, I went along to the school when they were doing it which was after the event which was nice. I find, generally speaking, I do keep in touch with the people that I’ve done commissions for. I think one of the nice moving ones in a sense in that way was the work that I did for Western Sussex Hospital Trust which was in connection with organ donation. There are two figures sitting on a bench and they’re passing something between them which is a gift. You can’t see what the gift is and you don’t know which way the gift is going but…I intended it to represent organ donation.

A number of things happened there which I found incredibly moving. One was when it was actually being installed… there are two couples: one in Worthing Hospital, one is Chichester Hospital. When the one was being installed in Chichester, there was a woman who was staring at it quite intently and the chief of the commissioning body said to her, you know, “You’re looking at it intently. What do you think of it?” And she said, “I just think it’s a beautiful distraction.” So she said, “What do you mean?” She said, “Well, I’ve just been told I’ve got cancer.” And I thought, you know, I found moving.

Then strangely when the next bronze sculpture went into Worthing and at the unveiling there were a couple who came up to me and they said it meant so much to them. They said because their daughter had wanted to give an organ and she’d been killed in a car accident. She said they hadn’t been in time and they said the figure of the girl looked just like her.

St Edmund of Abingdon, Oxford University © Rodney Munday

Lucy Branch: Wow. That… chokes you, actually.

Rodney Munday: It really does. Then when I’ve come back there occasionally and I find certainly in Chichester Hospital somebody’s always putting flowers in the hands of the girl and they’re always just left there. If you can have that sort of involvement and you’ve actually moved people in that sort of way, it is an…it’s humbling. I mean, it is absolutely…it’s just a wonderful experience.

Lucy Branch: That’s where the power is in large scale bronze sculpture.  There’s a lot of people that will never ever go into a gallery – a sad fact, unfortunately. But with public art, people can connect without feeling threatened by it. That somehow an institution that surrounds it makes it more threatening to them and they feel uncomfortable there, but these spaces are just such a wonderful place to be able to engage with sculpture and to see those things, those very precious suggestions in the sculpture and in the art. It’s one of the reasons that I love it more than anything any other type of art. Not just because I work with it but because I feel that it’s a safe space in a way for people to enjoy it and to connect with it.

Rodney Munday: Yes, and I think you get all sorts of comments and I’m sure you must find this yourself when you’re doing restoration work where people actually come to you and speak about the pieces you’re doing.

Lucy Branch: Oh, yes. We did conservation work on The Bomber Command bronze sculpture last year where someone had thrown white paint over it. It must’ve been a pacifism message although nobody ever claimed it. But we had dozens and dozens and dozens of visitors to that monument. They came from all over the world and the stories they told us about the relations they’d had that had served as part of their unit and the individuals.  I could’ve done absolutely no work whatsoever. I could’ve just talked to them all day long.

Rodney: Right.

Lucy Branch: They were magnificent, but they engaged. The monument meant so much to them. Some of them had come from all over the world. South Africa. Some said, ‘we’ve been here seven times  just to come here to London, that’s why we come.’ I think, Wow, I mean, what commitment to a sculpture but that’s what it can create.

Rodney: Yeah.

Lucy Branch: Yes. I agree. I was going to ask you a little bit about your creative practice, is there anything that you do that helps you to move into the mood to be able to come up with some deep ideas, moving out of the shallow ideas to the deep ideas?

Rodney Munday: Well, I think the muse is something which in a sense makes use of you rather than you making use of it in a sense.

Lucy Branch: You seem to really love your farming. Is that something that being outdoors and things feed into that process do you think?

Rodney Munday: I think it has to do with the whole love of creativity. I mean, one of the things that I really love to do, if I’m taking somebody around the farm in the spring, is when the corn is just a few inches high, when it just starts to joint, I like to split the stem open above the first joint and show people the ear of corn which is then perhaps two or three millimeters long with all the grain in there and, if it’s barley, the beard as well. And there it is. It’s like looking into the womb and that is just such a wonderful symbol of creation.

I think one of the things that… probably has been a gift that the farm has given me is this wonder of creation and, you know, seeing all sorts of other things like animals as well. It is that whole creative thing and I think…and that ties in to some extent with the church pieces. A lot of the work I’ve done actually has all been to commission. Partly, because bronze sculpture is an expensive business and if you’re trying to do it yourself, you need to lay out the money.

But I’ve done just a couple of pieces for myself and one was a piece which I call the creation of Adam and Eve and the reason I did it was that in the old days, when I was at a craft fair, I knocked up a little Adam sitting, contemplating an apple. When I finished, I thought, “I shouldn’t have done it like that because he was complete.” I thought, “I should’ve had him not made completely.” But he himself was being made because the apple was in the garden before Adam was.

And it seemed to me that that whole story about the creation of Adam and Eve is, and it has always attracted artists, it’s terribly important because what it gives you is the…is a creator who has an idea and then he actually gets out there in the world outside himself to make it which is one of the reasons I’m not terribly keen on conceptual art because so long as a work of art just remains an idea in your mind, it is stillborn. So God goes out there and he makes Adam and Eve and they’re not obedient but he didn’t intend them to be. I mean, the apple was shoved there, in the garden for them to take it and that is the freedom that the…it seems to me that the artist gives to his work.

The Gift – Chichester and Worthing Hospitals. © Rodney Munday

I think that when you’re making something, you actually have a relationship with it

and it gets away from you and you can actually then have a rapport with the thing you’re creating. I think that’s true of absolutely every kind of creation. It’s true, if you like your God with Adam and Eve, it’s true of parents with their children and it’s true if you’re making a work of art as well. It gets away and it is that rapport and that is one of the really, really, wonderful things about the whole creative thing is that, in a sense, it doesn’t just come from you. It’s a funny thing from outside.

Lucy Branch: Oh, I totally agree with that. I’m at the end of writing a novel at the moment and I’ve had to set aside and it’s just before the end so it shouldn’t be something that I have to set aside. It’s just the moment where you would think you were going full steam ahead but…I can feel it moving away from me rather than towards me and so I just feel it’s the moment to pause and that idea of that creation cycle and going with it rather than fighting it. Funny that you did this sculpture many years ago and yet the idea has come back to you. I love that, that sort of motion within the idea.

Rodney Munday: Yes. one of the writers I like on this sort of thing is E. M. Forster and at one point…if I can remember exactly what he says, he says,

Personality has become far too insistent these days and I look back to a time when a poem was seen as an inspiration and it came from outside and sometimes that inspiration came from God.

And that was written by an agnostic. But…what he is saying is that, it’s not just… the personality, it’s not important. It’s something that comes in …It’s what inspiration means. Unfortunately, I can’t remember his exact quote.

Lucy Branch: Well, you’ve done very well to remember. Whenever I’m reaching for a quote, again, it seems to recede into the background. You’ve done amazingly.

Rodney: Thank you.

Lucy Branch: I was going to ask you if you’ve had any conservation related problems with your bronze sculptures? Have you ever had any difficulties either with making them or with thereafter once they’ve been installed?

Rodney Munday: No. I mean, the first I was really aware of a problem with bronze was with the issue over copper run-off and the greening of bronzes for the Cirencester commission which we’ve spoken about because…the pieces that I’ve done, I’ve just really left outside to sort of mature on their own. Occasionally, if it’s been a private work when somebody’s moved house or something and I’ve had to move it from one garden to another one, I might’ve just sort of cleaned it off and re-polished, but I haven’t done any more.

Lucy Branch: Have you…so you quite enjoy the idea of a natural degradation of your work, a sort of decline in terms of surface?

Rodney Munday: Well, yes. I mean, up to a point because I haven’t actually seen it go to a point where it has become really detrimental. I mean, there’s a bronze sculpture I did in Oxford of St. Edmund of Abingdon which…

Lucy Branch: Oh, I love that piece, yes.

Rodney Munday: Right, and that was placed on a lovely York stone seat. And that…I mean, that has deteriorated far faster than the bronze and I did actually say to the college that they ought to do something about that. And they were quite happy with the way it was going because it looked…it’s in the grounds of their library which is in fact now a churchyard and it’s going the same way as all the other stones in the churchyard but it was such a beautiful piece of stone. I think that was a shame. I did in fact say to them that if they cleaned it which I thought they should do, then I would actually wash down and re-polish the statue. That had a ferric finish.

Lucy Branch: Well, I mean, over time the patinas on outdoor bronze sculptures oxidize and you get this naturally occurring patina which can be far more beautiful than what your original creation was. It also unfortunately can become disfiguring. It depends on what the environment is providing how it’s being used obviously. If somebody is consistently sitting on it for photographs, say, it will change very differently to if it’s under a drainpipe, say. So you’ve got that aspect to it that I always think is quite an exciting aspect to seeing where it goes to is how is it going to develop because you really can’t predict these things very often.

Rodney Munday: No, no. No, it’s interesting. I know I say, I’ve liked the way things have gone so far.

Lucy Branch: Yes. Well, although, obviously, my work is preservation, I definitely feel that the view of the artist and, the sculptor, has to be understood before you start doing anything because very often you get with restoration people coming in and they’re trying to take it back to a point in time where perhaps the artist created it but that’s not necessarily the view of the artist. They want to see it change and they want to see how people are going to use it and their impression upon it.

Rodney Munday: Yes, I mean, it is a living thing in a sense, isn’t it? In that sense.

Lucy: And that’s why bronze sculpture is so beautiful because it evolves.

Rodney Munday: Yes. It is. It’s a lovely material and certainly for what I do. It is really ideal because I love to work in is clay. I always use terracotta clay basically because it… I think it’s important to have a lovely finish in the bronze but because I have a rough finish, I want a fairly plain patination. So I either go for liver or ferric or very straightforward greens.

Lucy Branch: But that’s sensible because they are very stable colors. It’s when you branch out into the very wild and wonderful pallets, which you can achieve with beautiful patinated finishes, but they are much less stable. Those traditional colors will give you much less aggravation in terms of conservation. So good choices.

Rodney Munday: Right, yes. And I mean, I think. If you’re really concerned with the form and the shadows that you get within it, then there’s nothing like a brown bronze, I think.

Lucy Branch: Oh, I agree. I love that traditional colour…we haven’t got enough vocabulary in the British language that describes the tones of bronze. Maybe that’s what my ambition will be by the end of my lifetime is to invent a whole vocabulary.

Rodney Munday: What a wonderful thing to do.

Lucy Branch: Well, I think we all need to have something to get on with. I think that would be a good one.

Rodney Munday: Yes, it would indeed. And actually, of course, to some extent, you do that in A Rarer Gift Than Gold

A Rarer Gift Than Gold

in addition to speaking about that wonderful patination, different colours and, you also say an awful lot about,  the brown bronzes themselves and how beautiful they are.

Lucy Branch: Well, maybe too much for fiction. Maybe it should’ve been a nonfiction book.

Rodney Munday: Well, I don’t know. I think it worked very well in it …but then of course I have that interest. One thing that strikes me about that actually, and I do find it extraordinary, is that so many people who end up producing bronze sculpture use a gray clay. I really find that bizarre. I mean, I know it’s cleaner to use but it doesn’t give you the same sense of the shadows and the form that you’re going to get if you’re using terracotta which is close to what you’re going to end up with.

Lucy Branch: That’s quite right actually because the lovely warmth of the colour of that clay, they is a similarity there between the final material and the bronze. So just if you could tell me a little bit about the Cirencester Commission that you’ve got on at the moment. I have obviously seen what you’ve put up on your website about it but it does seem like a very interesting project.

Rodney Munday: Yes, it is. It’s a fascinating one. What happened was that back in the 60s the original bronze sculptures were stone and had become dangerous and so they were taken down and then lost.

Lucy: Oh, no.

Rodney Munday: Well, one of them…I think they were broken up actually as they came down but one of them…I think the one of John the Baptist was put into a shed and the shed caught fire and that was the end of that one. Nobody knows what happened to the virgin and child or even if it was the virgin and child. Though they’re pretty sure it was. Surprisingly, it’s not that long ago but there seem to be very, few photographs of what many memories was there and not really which…strikes me as bizarre but anyway, they wanted to replace them. I was lucky to get the commission which…really has absorbed my attention in all sorts of ways. It’s lovely because it gives me the chance of using the human form again.

On John the Baptist, I was originally going to have him sort of leaning out, branching across the last of the Old Testament prophets but I wasn’t really happy with that.  I was speaking to the vicar there and he said he’d seen an image of John the Baptist…a picture, I think it was of him with piercing eyes, that saw through you and he said he saw this as an image of God looking through John so that John was just, again, inspired if you like. He was just an intermediary and I thought that sounded good.

Virgin Child

Virgin and Child © Rodney Munday Project Blackjack for St John Baptist Church, Cirencester

Then when I was in the church afterwards, someone came up to me and pointed out a window where John the Baptist was holding a lamb. All the images I’ve seen of John the Baptist that I’m aware of really is always with him as a child with the lamb. So I thought, “Well, this was a good one.” He was holding the lamb out and, of course, Cirencester gained its wealth through the wool industry. So it was… tied in with the town itself as well as just being a Christian symbol.

Then for the Virgin and Child, rather than have the Virgin with a baby, I got a little boy Christ and because he’s going be up at 60 feet…up at the tower, she’s holding him out having a look like any inquisitive child with a mother and, of course, he happens to be in the position of the crucifixion. So in a sense, it’s a cross between Virgin and child and Pieta. Though ..it was just…there’s sort of really interesting ideas came in. Then I was thinking about John the Baptist and the Virgin and child and how, you know, they both tie in with the incarnation.

Again, because it was a religious thing, my ideas about creation and the whole creation story and the importance of redemption and the way in which the three tie together. So theologically, I found it very interesting to do which is one of the reasons why I’d like to write this book to go with it because the whole process of Christian art as with Christianity itself is a changing one. So that people are trying to do different things at different times and, you are always of your own time, but I think what you have to do is keep in mind the continuum that you’re a part of.

Lucy Branch: Interesting that you’ve drawn so much from the context of where the bronze sculptures will be that you’ve taken different threads and brought them together actually within these figurative sculptures but I love the fact that there’s so much feeding into them but definitely that it’s of that place. Not just generally from text. Obviously, there’s the textual inspiration as well but it’s joint ideas coming together there.

Rodney Munday: Well, I think that is always important, isn’t it? It’s certainly important if you’re putting sculpture in somewhere because that’s how you relate to the people who are there and it is that relationship between the sculptor and the people he’s doing it for because if there was no relationship, it hasn’t got the same importance. I mean, I found the same thing for the statue of St. Andrew for Plymouth Minister who’s casting a fishing net. Again, the net is, you know, is still a fishing boat so it has a direct relationship.

Lucy Branch: Fantastic energy that net has with the bronze sculpture. I think it’s…it really has  a sort of captured intensity there …that’s a really nice piece.

Rodney Munday: Well, thank you. Yes, I mean, I really enjoyed doing that. It was a lovely piece to do.

Lucy Branch: So have you any ambitions to have a bronze sculpture in a certain place? If you could have one of your sculptures anywhere, where would you have it?

Rodney Munday: Gosh, I don’t know. I mean, I’m very happy with the places I’ve got them at the moment: Plymouth Minister, I mean, that was such a wonderful site for a sculpture and I couldn’t have asked for anything better than that.

Lucy: Yes

Rodney Munday: You know, it’s wonderful on top of those pillars forming an arch. I mean,…I couldn’t have imagined a better place.

Lucy Branch: It really looks like it was made for it, really, doesn’t it?

Rodney Munday: Yes, I mean, people have said that it looks as though it’s always been there which is…a

Lucy: Great compliment.

Rodney: It’s rather nice.

Rodney Munday: But with Cirencester I think these things happen and it’s not a point of looking for somewhere. I mean, if something turns up like that…if you were looking for somewhere, you wouldn’t find anywhere better.

Lucy: No.

Rodney: It’s just lovely.

Lucy Branch: Well, where can people find you if they’d like to know more about your bronze sculptures?

Rodney Munday: I suppose my website is the best spot. I mean, I’ve got a Facebook page as well. And I’m on Instagram but…

Lucy Branch: I will put those details in the show notes but if you’d like to just tell everyone what your website address is.

Rodney: Right. The website is www.rodneymunday-sculptor.co.uk

Lucy: Perfect. And are you’re on Facebook, I know. Are you on Twitter?

Rodney: No, I’m not.

Lucy: No, so Facebook is your other platform.

Rodney Munday: That’s right. I mean, in a sense, the website is best because I do write about what I’ve been trying to do in the different pieces. If anyone was interested to see where they come from. But I don’t like huge explanations about works of art. There’s too much of that these days but I do think it’s interesting to know why you’re doing something and what it has its connections with.

Lucy Branch: Brilliant. Well, thank you very much, Rodney. I’m really thrilled to have chatted to you today and hope to speak to you again soon.

Rodney Munday: Well, it’s lovely speaking to you too, Lucy and I look forward to your forthcoming books.

St John The Baptist © Rodney Munday. Project Blackjack for St John Baptist Church, Cirencester