Heather Jansch
Heather Jansch (born Heather Rosemary Sewell) is a British sculptor notable for making life-sized sculptures of horses from driftwood.[3] She has also used cork as a material in her earlier creations.[4] Jansch reported that she struggled in her youth in schools, but had a passion for drawing and horses.
Heather Jansch | |
|---|---|
| Born | Heather Rosemary Sewell[1] August 3, 1948[2] Essex |
| Education | Walthamstow College of Art and Goldsmiths College[1] |
| Occupation | Sculptor |
| Years active | 1968–present |
Notable work | Driftwood horses |
| Spouse(s) | Bert Jansch (divorced)[1] |
| Website | http://www.heatherjansch.com |
While an art student at Walthamstow College of Art in 1967 she met the musician Roy Harper. It was Harper who introduced her to the guitarist Bert Jansch, who she later married.[1]
She bought a smaller hill farm, breeding Welsh cobs[1] and specializing in painting traditional equestrian portraits until starting to sculpt. She later moved to south Devon.
By 1986 she was exhibiting sculpture regularly with Courcoux and Courcoux, a leading provincial contemporary gallery then based in Salisbury who took her work to the London Contemporary Art Fair where it received very favourable reviews.
Her life-size driftwood horses became her hall mark and in 1999 were featured in the Shape of the Century 100 Years of Sculpture in Britain at Salisbury Cathedral.[5]
The exhibition was then taken to London's Canary Wharf as part of the millennium celebrations in 2000 where her horses caught the attention of Tim Smit KBE founder of the Eden Project and she was invited to become one of their resident artists. Her horse was voted the most popular art work there and has since become widely known as The Eden Horse.
By 2001 she was casting works in bronze and had bought a small converted Coach House in fourteen acres of steep woodland with two acres of water-meadow and a stream where she began to explore site specific sculpture and over the next decade created a sculpture garden which in 2008 was included in The National Gardens Scheme's Yellow Book. The house was extended to include a gallery.
In 2009 she set up Olchard Press. She published Heather Jansch's Diary.
Her sculptures can cost up to £55,000 each and can take up to three years to produce.
Picture gallery
References
- "Heather Jansch – Profile". Heatherjansch.com. Retrieved 29 October 2013.
- C. Jordan (12 May 2009). "Amazing Art: The Dynamic Driftwood Horse Sculptures of Heather Jansch". Quazen.com.
- Lisa Allardice (22 August 2009). "Knocking on Devon's doors". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 March 2011.
One of the undoubted highlights of our tour was a visit to the studio of Heather Jansch – Devon's answer to Damien Hirst – in Olchard, where her strikingly beautiful life-size horse sculptures, crafted from driftwood salvaged from nearby beaches, seem so alive as to almost sniff the air of her pretty wilderness garden.
- SUSAN ALLEN TOTH (22 July 2001). "More Than One Eden in Cornwall". The New York Times. Retrieved 5 March 2011.
... The Eden Project: Heather Jansch's cork and wood sculpture in the Visitor Center; ...
- "Heather Jansch | Arthus Gallery".
