Richard Stott is not your usual bible basher. He doesn’t quote passages, wave crucifixes or talk about the sins of today’s children. He makes clay figurines and hides them in doorways.
Part Methodist Minister, part artist, Richard sculpted 40 little men from clay and went around Sheffield and the surrounding area hiding them in alleyways, phone-boxes, grass verges – “anywhere a 20cm clay man might sit and watch the world”.
The reason? To represent Jesus’ retreat into the desert for 40 days, the root of our modern-day lent. The clay men, which Richard made himself in his art studio in the centre of Sheffield, all went on their own voyages into the wilderness, and the survivors are now in display in a church in Crookes.
Richard is one of a group of artists exploring wilderness for the exhibition – but few of the 17 others are quite so unconventional, mostly sticking to paintings.
It’s not a way of preaching, Richard argues, but a way of putting out a message and having people interpret it however they want.
“It’s not even necessarily a religious thing at all, just an exploration of the really human experience of feeling like you’re lost”, he said.
“It reflects what the world does to us, what happens to us and how it changes us”.
The figures themselves are simple, but quite endearing. Their chunky arms by their sides, their little faces staring up, almost expectantly, as they sit in quiet vigil in amongst a pile of rubble next to a building site.
“Some of them disappeared overnight. But even that’s interesting to see. Someone is either going to smash them up, or nick them, but whatever happens it shows something about human behaviour”, he said.
“The moment you put a face on it, they become a little person. I’m quite interested in how our brain works and how we become emotionally attached to them in some way”.
“Some people think I’m a bit cruel. My mum said I was harsh to send them out all alone,” he said.
But it’s not just the survivors that he’s interested in. Richard leaves each figure with a scrap of paper, pleading for a photograph of the clay person in its natural habitat. In the first two weeks alone, he’s already had a handful of photos.
Because the clay isn’t fired – a deliberate choice to make them vulnerable to the elements – many of the photos show a sodden mess of misshapen clay.
“I had a picture back from him”, he says, pointing to a picture of a clay man, arms folded, looking up at the trees. He was in Ecclesall Woods, and now he’s just a little pile of clay.”
Many photos say something about Sheffield. He got one showing the figure exactly as he’d left it, but with a cigarette shoved in its mouth.
Richard’s path to making clay men is as unconventional as his art. Born in Manchester, he moved to Sheffield to train to be a doctor, but gave it up to be an ordained minister for the Methodist Church. After six years, he changed tack again, training to be an art therapist.
One day, he says, he decided he wanted to combine them. Now he does art therapy in community groups at his church in Crookes, often talking to groups of schoolchildren to help them explore religion using creativity and art.
Having been on a similarly varied journey of their own, 24 of Richard’s 40 figures survived their ordeal and made it into the warmth of the church’s display.
So what has he learnt from their plight?
“I realise that when I sent them out they all looked the same. Now, having been exposed to the world for 40 days, they have become individuals – each of them being affected by and taking on some of the characteristics of the environment in which they were left,” he says.
“I am left to wonder whether the person I am is simply the sum total of my experiences and my inheritance; the clay that makes me, in the space where I have lived.”
The Wilderness Exhibition is open now until Easter at Wesley Hall Methodist Church, Sheffield.
Official site: http://wilderness-exhibition.com
Richard Stott’s blog: http://iaskforwonder.com/