Read this Wildlife Art Journal article

Every artist strives to be original.  Sculptor Harriet Mead, the latest link in Wildlife Art Journal's ongoing peer to peer interviews called Five Questions/Five Art Works, is making her own authentic statement about art and the natural world.  A maven of found objects Mead works with found instustrial materials and she transforms them into exquisite composites of beauty.  She says, "I use steel to create my sculptures as it enables me to capture the movement of the subject and balance the pieces in a way that would be impossible if I were using a more traditional material."

A resident of rural Norfolk, she owes her fascination with the outdoors to gentle nurturing from her late father, Chris Mead, who was a well known author and broadcaster—in addition to being a devoted ornithologist.  Ms. Mead was won a number of important commissions and her monument-sized pieces can be viewed in a number of public spaces. 

Well respected by her contemporaries, Mead is a member of the Artists for Nature Foundation and also is the newly elected president of the Society of Wildlife Artists in England that comes with a five-year term carrying her through SWLA's golden anniversary in 2013. 

In the conversation that follows, sculptor Sam MacDonald engages Mead about whey she gravitated toward scrap steel as a medium and the way that artistic talent can be harnessed to achieve better safeguarding of the natural world.


SAM MACDONALD: Why is wildlife your chosen...