Raphael Daden

Raphael Daden, originally from Somerset, is a Nottingham/UK-based sculptor working mainly with light. At Loughborough College, he learnt how to create different things with unique forms of creation, such as casting and welding. He started working with resin, acrylic, and glass while casting parts of the landscape reflecting the essence of the natural environment in urban spaces, he mainly started with wood in 2010. He has been combining different materials with light for over ten years and has been working professionally on commissions. For example, his first commission was a series of giant illuminated 'Cones' on West Street, Brighton, using translucent polyester resin, steel and light. The solution to thinking of what are the best materials to use for outdoor sculptures is to think of how the said sculpture would be maintained for as long as it is on display, such as resin and steel can make the final product look pristine for as long as it is properly maintained.

His works are economically good, as having more cash means companies have the resources to procure capital, improve technology, grow, and expand. Daden was commissioned with an amount of money to work with.

Daden has used a plethora of materials, such as resin, stainless steel, and stone to create a piece made of such material called The Levels, created in 2021. This sculpture was made for Weymouth Art Trail with the theme being water, the theme consists of levels relating to the sea levels rising and looking into its effects on our planet. The Levels artwork is made from stainless steel and resin, which is 40% plant-based and the most eco resin on the market. It was worked with poet Aly Stoneman in the development of a poem.

Aly Stoneman is a freelance community arts producer currently working with Adverse Camber (and previously with Pedestrian, Junction Arts, Voice Magazine, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust (Poetic Spurn) and Nottingham Writers’ Studio among others). She was the founding Poetry Editor at LeftLion Magazine (2010-2018) presenting live literature events, and a commissioned writer with Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature, Writing East Midlands, Nottingham Trent University and more.

"Start at sea level

reckon the tide’s surge

metre by metre

over patchwork fields

blue outflanking you

year on year to the threshold of your house,

your tongue slipping

on place-names sunk

in sediment and brackish water.

your home means little to a future

of eroded cliffs, toppled

tree stumps at low tide;

roads leading nowhere.

the sea sends

harbinger gulls inland.

we must navigate

our changing world."

In 2015, Daden created a sculpture named I Can Hear You, it was inspired by Daden and the shapes and designs of listening devices used by the military in the Second World War, using basic colours and shapes to show what it represents, this sculpture inspires me to use more simple shapes, as meaning can be shaped as it is worked on. Before the invention of radar during World War II, incoming enemy warplanes were detected by listening with the aid of "sound locators" that looked more like musical instruments than tools of war.

These radar forerunners, which earned the nicknames "war tubas" or "sound trumpets," were first used during World War I by France and Britain to spot German Zeppelin airships. The purely mechanical devices were, essentially, large horns connected to a stethoscope.

(listening devices used by the military in the Second World War)

All of these separate pieces of art can show that even the simplest of shapes, colours and formations can be considered art, as long as there is a meaning to it. And I could take influence from this piece of work because of the simplicity of the shapes and colour positions. I could use heavy inspiration for a future piece of art and use the layered colouring for my own; the colour itself or the shapes formation.