I find the track, driving over dirt and loose stones, I stop at the gate, briefly, to check hand written visitor instructions. The gate is open, so I drive on. Passing giant, galvanised, sleeping feet, slumbering on a grass bed, I glimpse Sophie ahead, in blue overalls, moving between a van and outbuildings.
Within outbuildings is a studio, a space where Sophie works on casts, building in scale, until sections of megalithic wire sculptures emerge. Sections that will be united, outside, in public and private spaces in being seen, to be considered.
We move indoors, I follow Sophie and I see a space, consumed with a history and a present. Hare, Minotaur, dog, horse, animal heads on human bodies; casts, created at 1/16 and 1/8 scale keep each other company, frozen intimately, as they witness the construction of their giant progenies.
Sophie shows me how she works. Pliers, treasured in her gloved hands tease strands of steel wire across joins between mesh panels, to create a mosaic skin over a steel skeleton. To be a piece called 'Rising', sections, grouped across the floor, await their skins, brown oxidised steel wire, to be galvanised before they unite, outside as a body.
Later, Sophie poses for the camera, alongside and on top of works in her garden and in her her indoor, home studio, alongside of a 2d wire Minotaur and a 8ft tall framed drawing of a pair of human, animal hybrids. Pedro, one of three family dogs, stays close and takes to her arms whenever he can.
Our photography is broken at around 11, stopping for tea and cake, we take a little time to catch up with what's happening in a busy home. I admire works that have become part of the interior. The temple to 200 rabbits, a piece I first came across at the Royal West of England Gallery, sits on the floor in the hall. All around the walls, works compete for attention among the trappings of a home.
Questions, I might want to ask of Sophie seem too intrusive. Art, personal and fuelled perhaps by thought, love, touch, the body, desire, fear, intimacy demand a respectful, sensitivity, without assumption and pretence of an understanding.
