His subjects are often wild animals, birds and mysterious creatures of the deep. An Arctic wolf. A horned owl. A nautilus with rippling tentacles. They are uncannily lifelike, and you feel that at any moment they could sniff the air before taking a tentative step towards you, or launch into flight.
What is all the more remarkable is that these creatures are fashioned from recycled materials. Ptolemy doesn’t work in bronze or clay or stone. He works with hubcaps rescued from the roadside, hulking shopping trolleys dredged from the murky riverbank, secondhand car bumpers left to rust in a salvage yard and unwanted scrap metal retrieved from casually discarded domestic appliances.
To him, the world is a giant Meccano set, ripe for the picking. He’s living proof of that old adage that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
Deep in his cavernous workshop, crammed with racks of discarded hubcaps and tools – a sort of Kwik Fit-meets-Mad Max world – Ptolemy, dressed in a bright-red boilersuit, is teasing a fin into life from a sliver of wheel trim. Beside him, a ferocious viperfish is taking shape, its jaws outstretched to reveal rows of razor-sharp teeth. Look a little closer and you’ll see its unblinking eye is actually a Skoda badge.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der April 2020-Ausgabe von Sussex Life.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der April 2020-Ausgabe von Sussex Life.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
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TAKE YOUR TIME
Dean Edwards’ new cookbook features delectable recipes that you can slow cook or stick in the oven. Here’s a selection of the best
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ON THE FRONT FOOT
The rugby legend took the reins at Sussex County Cricket Club in 2017, rekindling his love for a sport that first won his heart on the village cricket fields of North Yorkshire
NAKED AMBITION
In the 1980s, Christine and Jennifer Binnie partied with Boy George and Marilyn and bared all as performance art collective The Neo-Naturists. Now they are working together to gain the recognition they feel they deserve
ROCKET MAN
Astronaut Tim Peake has come a long way since growing up in Westbourne and attending Chichester High School for Boys: 248 miles above Earth, to be precise. But, he says, life on the International Space Station has a lot in common with family caravanning holidays
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Lewes’ most famous resident Thomas Paine may be the greatest propagandist who ever lived. But how did a humble customs and excise officer ignite the touchpaper for revolution in not one but two countries?
THE DIARY
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All in a day's work
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My favourite Sussex
Bruce Fogle is an author and a vet with a practice in London who has lived in West Sussex with his wife, the actress Julia Foster, since 1989. He recently became president of RSPCA Mount Noddy near Chichester
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Brighton is often rated one of the most vegan-friendly cities in the UK. What these restaurants prove is that plant-based food doesn’t have to be puritanical – at all of these places you’ll find big flavours and a desire to push the envelope
