The Great Leveller

Found these letters hidden away in a drawer, forgot I even had them. There's a wee story behind them so brace yourself for some wordage...

They're aluminium casts of alphabet letter sweets made in my final year of art college, the only part left of some sculptures from my degree show.

A few months before the show I was working late in the college when the fire alarm went off and I realised the orange colours passing by my second floor window didn't belong to a big painting but were huge flames rising up from the studio below.

We all made it out safely and watched silently as the flames took out our windows and proceeded to burn down our studio and most of the art we'd been making for years.

A strange situation to be in, not knowing whether to remake old pieces or start on new ideas with the degree show fast approaching.

It ended up being the best thing that could have happened. I remade a few works while also shot a new photography piece in the burnt out shell of the studio.

I then got to thinking that if all the great artists' studios went on fire that their work would look no different than mine, a pile of black ash. It was my one chance to reach their level.

So I made 'The Great Leveller' a row of white wooden boxes with a famous artist's name spelled out on top of each box using the letters above; Picasso, Van Gogh, Cezanne, while the last one spelled my surname. Inside each box I created a mini museum interior where piles of black ash sat on identical white wooden plinths.

For one brief fictional moment my work looked exactly the same as the great masters and it felt good.