In the studio with… Steve Lewis

How long have you been at APT?
26 years … cannot believe it.. I was part of the core team of four that set it up after eleven of us     migrated from GASA    (Greenwich Artists Studio Association) when we lost our studios.

Describe APT in three words...
Grass Roots. Non-Hierarchical. Supportive

What is your practice and how do you like to work in your studio? 
I mostly make sculpture, drawings and some prints. With sculpture I usually start with drawings but I also work directly with materials. When I first left college in Manchester I was making large assembled wood sculptures, chain sawed and pegged, heavy and in the round. I continually add, trim and modify until, when finished, there is just an object in space, sitting right, and with luck and will, its own poetry. I realised recently that I still have the essence of that approach.

I occasionally make small drawings, I mean very small, 3cm and if it’s intriguing enough, ill enlarge it with an overhead projector and transcribe onto steel directly. This translation of image is a little like the alchemy of casting a clay or wax sculpture into bronze, it is exciting and something nearly always comes of it.

Which artists have influenced you?
Henri Laurens, David Smith, Paul Klee, Hireonymous Bosch and Pieter Breugal. They are all the big hitters but the list actually is very long and also includes music. When I had just left college, starting out, I found a great little book by Garnet McCoy on David Smith in the Arnolfini Gallery bookshop in Bristol. I looked through it every week but it was too expensive (I was a cleaner in Swartz Bros hamburgers)…I waited for months till I had the money and bought it…I found it the other day, it was only £3.59!

What is the most unusual thing someone might find in your studio?
Well I have two objects that come to mind. I have a fan blade from a Rolls Royce Pegasus jet engine that came from a Harrier jump jet. It is hard to believe that it survived the huge forces of extreme heat and stress whilst part of the engine. I also have a French Artillery sword from 1831 that my dad, a young commando, bought from a French foreign Legionnaire at the foot of the Atlas mountains in 1943, prior to the invasion of Sicily.


Scroll down for details of Steve’s up and coming show at Woodenbox Gallery, Ramsgate