Anthony opened his two acre sculpture trail in Wylye Valley Art Trail in Wiltshire when a plethora of artist studios were open last week. There was a quiz with the small 6 inch high sculpture of a bird shown below as a prize to be raffled amongst the highest scorers. There were four entries with all the questions answered correctly. After a draw the sculpture was posted to a family in Tisbury
One of the questions in the quiz was why is this frog called Moby. Nothing to do with Moby Dick. It is covered in mobile phone dummies.
There were two questions about Toad of Toad Hall in a Willow Tree. Most entrants answered correctly about the steering wheel that it represented his dangerous driving in the book "Wind in the Willows".But as to why he was seeking safety up a tree only a few entrants spotted the crocodile lurking nearby. In the wild they can be hard to spot. The beast is shown below. I accepted snake as a correct answer as it could be a giant snake, an anaconda perhaps. There were other answers harking back to the book -scared of the weasels, hiding from the police having crashed his car.
Nearly all entrants got this one right. It is called a Mini Monster because it was the front of a Mini car in previous life before it turned carnivore.
The children were better than adults at answering this one. The snakes on the head are those of Medusa. The question was: why must you only look at this sculpture in the mirror? There is a mirror nearby. Perseus in Greek mythology decapitated her using the reflection of a polished shield to avoid looking directly at her and being turned to stone. The head was a broken bit of a vacuum cleaner and the snakes made from twisted pipes.
Under the Owl Tree is Lulu one of the owls. Most entrants spotted why it is called that. It was made our of a smashed loo seat. That was found by the road. It had a widow's peak a common feature of owls.
The Scraptors installed these pyramids pictured below at Stourhead the National Trust garden in Wiltshire to represent the Middle East where local men fought in the First World War in particular at Gallipoli. The theme of our trail was "Stourhead will never forget." commemorating the effect of the First World War on the area. The symbols on the pyramids represent the nations that fought at Gallipoli: the British, Commonwealth nations, France, Turkey and Britain.. The pyramids are now placed, a bit decayed, in the sculpture trail. A question in the quiz was which country fighting at Gallipoli was represented by the blue cornflower. The answer was France.
We made a representation of horse's head with a gas mask for "Arcadia to Armageddon" a 3D mural we created in the woods at Stourhead the National Trust property in Wiltshire. The ploughing horse morphs into a war horse in the painting. The horse's head lay on the ground in a mask.
In 2018 we were asked to display items from the Stourhead trail at an event in the Close of Salisbury Cathedral in aid of SSAFA the charity for the armed services. The image below shows them there.
The cracked helmet on the figure on the left is an actual First World War one found in Anthony's garden which is on the site of an army camp in that war. Everyone got the quiz question right about the horse. It was wearing a mask because of gas attacks which affected horses in that war.
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