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.
This story is from the April 2020 edition of Sussex Life.
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This story is from the April 2020 edition of Sussex Life.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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