About us
Dean Phillips
& cARacTac™
Well, I never had the patience for art classes when I attended St.Peters.They just didn't seem important at the time,sitting on your ass getting numb bum just to draw a plant or a bowl of plastic fruit.However I did become interested in ceramics, which is probably why I've become so involved in my collection of caractac sculpture.It all started back in 1994, seems so long ago now. I moved to London from the West Midlands in search of a peaceful life, I can hear you saying "London for a peaceful life"! Well I did and 2 days after I came, I was introduced in to the world of advertising, mm, far from peaceful.This is when I was re-introduced to the wonderful product of blu-tack manufactured by Bostik, well known for its versatillity. I would also use similar products on the market with different colours and elasticity. All for the same ends, to stick posters up with. However I found myself using blu-tack outside of my work environment, it can be very therapeutic. It was around this time that I found myself creating strange little figures, you know, just passing the time of day. I was in a friends house one day talking to Amy in the kitchen, that's my friends daughter. I was playing with a piece of blu tack.I gave her some, to see if she could create something.While I was busy with my sculpture she started laughing uncontrolably. When I looked to see what she had made, it was a little chimp. Now I was laughing, in came mum,Lisa. We were now all laughing, I'm sure the chimp sculpture was laughing aswell. This is when I destroyed that which I had made. I was very surprised to hear my friend Lisa say " Why did you destroy that? That was really good" to which I replied, "Ah sorry, I will make another one for you but if you like it that much, will you buy it from me"? She agreed and this was when I recognised that I had found my own little niche. For a while I was making them as free standing sculpture but as time went by, space was becoming a problem, so I set about adapting them to board then canvas. Now I had the added benefit of using wall space. However, the leap forward was when a girlfriend suggested that I should take photos of them. Some time later I did and was truly amazed how I could manipulate the image. Then my wish was to enlarge the image but because all photos were taken with my camera phone(Nokia95) I could only increase the size slightly before losing quality of the image. However,having recently invested in a new camera (Nikon D5000) I am now happy to make available, prints of my cARacTac™
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