Andy Stonyer

Andrew Stonyer studied at Northampton School of Art, Loughborough College of Art and Design, The Architectural Association School of Architecture, and Leicester Polytechnic in collaboration with the Slade School of Fine Art. The latter period of study was marked in 1978, by his being awarded the first PhD for studio based research in Fine Art in the UK. This concerned the use of solar energy in the development of kinetic sculpture. He has taught, exhibited and completed commissions in Turkey, Holland, Canada and the United States of America, and his work can be found in public and private collections in all of these countries. He is currently a trustee and Chairman of the Forest of Dean Sculpture Trail. The central theme in Andrew’s sculpture is a search for pattern and how these patterns can become aesthetically significant. This involves basic geometrical forms such as squares, golden section rectangles and prisms as well as circles, and extends to the stimuli of our everyday environment, involving mass transit systems, sunlight, and patterns found in time. The search for pattern in geometrical forms has increasingly focused on the golden section prism, an essentially stable and balanced form, and how the natural stasis of this form can be interrupted when the prism is bisected and destabilised by diagonal lines and cuts. The disposition of the latter are influenced by Schoenberg's tonal system and results in a passive and harmonious form becoming dissonant. These are the Segmented Prisms. In the kinetic sculpture 'Pulse' a ring of neon set into the outside of a circle, is energised by the vibration of trains entering and leaving a station and in 'Timepiece' patterns of aesthetic imagery mark the duration of the hour.