Artist Faith Bebbington is celebrating the success of her most recent installation, ‘The Hart of London’. Faith, who has established a national reputation for her sculptures, creates dynamic figurative sculptures that capture movement and humanise public spaces. She attended Abbotsholme between 1977 and 1982.

‘The Hart of London’ was a reminder to the London public to cut down on plastic waste over the festive period. The illuminated life-size deer sculpture was made from 2,000 plastic bottles and installed in St James’s Church Gardens, just off Piccadilly in London. A £3 ‘tap donation’ triggered the hart’s heart to light up and raised £900 for the St James’s Church Trust, which supports night shelters for the homeless and counselling for asylum-seekers.

Faith has been a professional artist based in Liverpool for nearly 25 years. She spent many years creating human figures in action. More recently, she has focused on creating life size sculptures of animals like The Ships Cat and Super Rat, largely the result of public commissions. She has also begun to use recycled waste materials, model with polymer clay and to explore sculpting with papercrete (concrete and paper). Faith has also worked with Veolia, the environmental waste management company, to create campaigns and projects across the UK, and The Football Association to create recycled pieces at Wembley Stadium.

Faith enjoys working with people and offers a range of workshops and facilitates youth and community arts projects to help people develop their creativity, confidence and technical skills.

The Impact of Abbotsholme
Faith said that attending Abbotsholme had a positive impact on her and that her most enduring memories involve working on the farm during lambing season and hand-rearing calves. She remembers having two brilliant art teachers - Mr Green, followed by Mr Greenwood - and spent many hours in the art room, mostly working with clay. Faith says that their support helped her gain a place on an arts foundation course on the strength of her portfolio alone.

Building her own canoe during Outdoor Education introduced her to working with fibreglass, which she later went on to use as her main sculpture medium for many years. 

Faith’s art can be viewed online at www.faithbebbington.co.uk. She also accepts commissions. 

Watch how ‘The Hart of London’ was made.