About Indrabodhi

"When I started re-establishing myself as a sculptor, these were the figures I started with. So why did I choose them? 

I’d just come to the end of three years of project managing the building work at Alfoxton Park which is a huge project and involved organising dozens of volunteers. I certainly enjoyed the work, but towards the end, probably because I didn’t get many breaks and was craving them but couldn’t work out how to do it as the project was always moving forward. I kind of internally fell apart, feeling weirdly insecure. Something I hadn’t felt in this way before. It certainly gave me a lot of compassion for people who experience a lot of that sort of overwhelm. The effect was, I needed it to stop and so I did. 

I had thoughts about returning to Brighton, but I had nowhere to live there any longer as the community I had lived in had dissolved. Fortuitously, I was offered a cottage in the nearby village of Holford, to live by my friend, Ben. So that’s what happened. 

But what was I to do? I didn’t know. returning to doing sculpture emerged by itself. it started with the figure of Cernunnos , the Celtic horned God. I saw a figure of him in the White Spring in Glastonbury. I felt moved by its presence in the darkness of the cave, the candlelight, the emerging bearded horned figure. I loved the scale of the figure too. It was quite substantial but not life-size so I decided I would like to make one of that size too. On a subsequent visit I snuck in there with a tape measure did a sketch of the figure and measured his height and width. I got caught by one of the guardians of the cave. She was very unhappy with me measuring up the figure. I told her I was going to make my own version, this seem to make her even more hostile. She told me to go into Glastonbury and buy a copy of it, from the sculptor, Phillipa Bowers’ shop . I told her that I wasn’t going to do that and that I would make my own, to, she responded if I copied it, I would be breaking copyright?! I was puzzled by this and her hostility. Cernunnos is an ancient figure and nobody has copyright over him. However, I did take her advice and visit Phillippa Bower’s shop. In fact I got Phillippa‘s phone number and asked her if I could come and see her. I visited with my friend Laura and we had a very lovely visit and I really appreciated her work and learning her technique of firing her work.

So having talked about the white spring, I just wanted to express my appreciation of all the work the guardian’s do there. They are not being paid for their guardianship of the White spring and do a great job of protecting the atmosphere of what it is a very beautiful space. I knew my figure would be significantly different from Phillipa’s so I had no copyright concerns.  

the left hand once a snake symbolising the underworld and the debts. The right hand is often shown holding a ring signifying some kind of regal Power with my figure I decided to put the ring around his wrist. And as he is the protector of animals, I thought appropriate gesture was an open hand offering sustenance to the animals. So currently he holds a ball in which I put seeds for the birds when he lives at home in my garden.

After this figure was completed, I felt impelled to do the female counterpart Celtic figure, which is the goddess Brigid. The after this figure was completed I was moved to work on a large Buddhist figure, Padmasambhava. He is credited with taking Buddhism to Tibet in the 8th century and strongly symbolises the idea of transformation, and that in order for the Buddhas teachings to establish themselves in a new context, they need restating so that they can be understood easily by that culture. In a small way that is what we are trying to create at Alfoxton Park, so having his figure as an inspiration seemed appropriate. "