CRAFT 35
you. Sometimes a mould cracks, or you get a hole in it and when you pour in the metal, it falls through the hole and is wasted, so it’s just about being mindful of each and every task you undertake. Go slowly and do every single move correctly. If you aren’t there, you have to do it over.”
IT’S A FORM OF PRESERVATION Many of the plants Nic’s casting are endangered and despite the fact that he’s trying to shine a light on their status and the threat of global warming, he also doesn’t want to be accused of collecting plants illegally. “I found my first plant growing in the middle of a path where people mountain-bike. It didn’t stand a chance, so it was coming with me. I don’t just stop and pick stuff on the side of the road because that’s illegal. If somebody asks me where the plants come from, I can say: ‘This came from a privately owned piece of land up near Scarborough, where I have permission to harvest. Here’s a photo with the GPS co-ordinates if you’d like to see, here’s my letter and there’s the sticker on my car when I park.’”
WHERE THE RUBBER MEETS THE ROAD “I’m planning to build a mobile studio. All my tools fit into my trailer and I can pull it into any landscape and pull out my drawer. There’s my oven, there are my vacuum tables and on the other side is a Bunsen burner, and the equipment I need for the foundation work. Then I have a mould. Collectively, all I need
5 6
can fit in a box. I hit the road with all my stuff, Bruhno [the Spinone] in tow.” The big idea is to hitch his trailer, go up to East
Africa to cast the flowering proteas of Uganda and then drive south, capturing all the proteas he can along the way from the eastern escarpment back down to SA’s Limpopo province, where there are lots of these flowers. “I hope there’s a museum one day which shows that ‘this is what they looked like’. There won’t be much scientific value to the world because there won’t be any DNA to work with, but we’ve got the shapes of proteas that are dying because of global warming and won’t grow again. The same goes for orchids. There are more than 300 species in the Cape alone. I’d like to capture that, have them as a collection and construct a building called the Cape Orchid Museum with another wing for the Natal Orchids. We’ve got 6 000 plant species in the Cape alone to play with. I’ve covered perhaps 400 thus far. That’s taken 12 years. I’m 43 now, so I’ve got – what? – 30 years to go? “These plants might not be here in 200 years’
time. There was an amazing photo of a house where everything was burnt to cinders. The only thing left in it was a bronze sculpture. That’s what could happen with these plants. I’m making metal fossils.”
4. Tulista minima (no common name). 5. Nic working on a Protea nitida (dwarf). 6. A freshly cast Leucadendron salignum (Golden sunshine conebush).
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