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ICONIC British breakfast cereal Shredded Wheat celebrated British Food Fortnight earlier this month with an exhibition of sculptures of famous British landmarks - made out of British Wheat!
And flying the flag for Scotland, in London's Leicester Square, was Galston artist Laura Antebi.
  The 'Land of Wheat and Glory' exhibition drew together eight leading British artists from across the country who had prepared their own wheat masterpieces.
  Laura's was a scupture of Edingbrugh Castle.
  In a recent poll, the Auld Reekie landmark was voted by people in Scotland as the best to represent north of the border.
  Said Laura this week: "The roughness of the wheat translated well to portray the rugged nature of the Scottish Landscape and ancient feel that Edinbrugh Castle evokes."

By Ian Russell

  Also on show at Leicester Square last week were wheat interpretations of Big Ben, which was, in the end, voted the most iconic landmark to represent the UK on a national level (artist Michelle Reader, from London), the Giant's Causway, Mount Snowdon, the Angel of the North, Blackpool Tower, Shakespeare's Birthplace and the Eden Project.
  Said Susie Weisberger of Shredded Wheat: "We wanted to find the one single thing that British people think best represents their region. The exhibition of wheat sculptures was a celebration of Britishness and Laura's castle was a wonderful entry from Scotland."

LONDON CALLING: Laura's exhibit clashed with other nationwide entries in the capital last week.

INSPIRED by the planet and its wealth of resources, live-wire sculptor Laura Antebi has travelled the world during the last 15 years. It was her experiences during this time which lead her to pursue a career as a figurative artist, exploring nature and form with lifelike impressionistic pieces made from galvanised steel or copper wire.
  Essentially self-taught, Laura started scupting in wire in 1995, five years before completing a BA Hons degree in Scupture at Dundee's Duncan of Jordanstone College of Fine Art, and has since displayed her work at a number of exhibitions across Scotland and England. There are also a number of permanent displays of her work including a leaping salmon at Crown Estate offices in Edinbrugh and a life-sized racehorse at a racing stable in Dorset. Despite the

popularity of her equine pieces, Laura says she doesn't really have a favourite piece as such: "When I'm working I connect with the individuality and intergrity of whatever life-form I'm translating into wire. Looking back at my work is like looking at footprints in the sand...coordinates I can trace on the map of my personal journey as an artist."
  Laura works directly from life or from memory to create the graceful life-like

sculptures, which can take anything from two weeks to several months to create, depending on the density of wire and degree of resolution. Using recycled wire, because of the history it retains, Laura brings the pieces to life with a slight turn or angle of the head, endeavouring to unite art with the spiritual essence of the figures, which convey spontaneity and freedom of movement.
  In the coming months she's hoping to challenge herself as a painter and explore the dimension of colour as well as preparing work for forthcoming exhibitions, which include a show at the Horse Racing Museum in Newmarket in September.

(reproduced with kind permission of Uptown Magazine)

Laura Antebi has the ability to turn 80 kilos of common or garden wire into a living breathing horse - its mane and tail streaming in the wind as it prances proudly across a sun dappled meadow. She can work the same magic to produce other animals too, but its her equine alchemy which tends to inspire the kind of purple prose I've been moved to indulge in above.

Entirely self-taught, Laura's talents are clearly instinctive and there's something vaguely uncanny about her ability to so accurately evoke power and vibrancy with nothing more than the basest of metals.There's nothing remotely fey or other-worldly about the actual construction process however." One of the bigger horses, roughly quarter-size, will take between two and three months to make," says Laura, "and it is very hard work, very physical. Larger pieces, like the horses - can weigh as much as 100 kilos and I often have to move them myself with the aid of a fairly primitive lever system. Although most of the form is created during the actual build up of the wire, I carry on long after the actual construction is complete using lumps of rock as tools for the 'fine tuning'."

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(extracts and photos reproduced with kind permission)

At the first glance it seems that a herd of horses and ponies is flolicking in the field- and by the water a heron or crane has landed.

Laura antebi, whose workshop, The Wire Studio, is at Drumlanrig Castle, Thornhill, Dumfriesshire, is the artist responsible, describing the talent as 'drawing with wire in space'.

She has no formal training in this , nor in the true-to-life pencil portraits she can produce in just 10 minutes (a popular attraction at agricultural shows). "I feel its innate; intuitive. I used to have a horse until I was 18 but I love all animals."

There was nothing in particular which sparked the idea to produce three-dimensional work in wire. "One day I just thought I'd make a horse sculpture using wire," she says. These days she makes horses ranging in size from around 10 inches high to real life pony dimensions. She also works wire, coiled and twisted upon itself, into hares, geese, swans, stags and kestrels - lifelike yet with an impressionistic edge, a blend of heron/crane/stork or hare/rabbit.

Some of the wire used is new; some recycled. "That dark fencing wire came from a farm in Moffat," she says, indicating a shadowy dark area deep in one of her sculptures and in a kestrel , brass furniture fittings have been incorporated to add definition.

It is time consuming, physically hard work. No solder is involved, simply pliers, a hammer, a rock to help bend the wire of different diameters, an eye for detail, dexterity and strength.

"The large pieces can take up to three months to make because they are not something you can work on all day. You basically get sore after a while. I also need a break to study the random movement of the wire and its effect.

"It's not just your hands which suffer; its such strong work that most of your body is effected - a large horse will weigh around 70 kilos when finished," says Laura.

The sculptures are bought for display both indoors and outdoors, the wire, being galvanised, is not adversely effected by the weather.

"The relationship of the metal with light is very special," says Laura. "It dazzles in the sun on a bright day but even if its dull it catches any available light and creates different moods." And whatever the mood, the effect is somehow always right for the moment.

(article reproduced with kind permission)