Blackfoot Pathways: Sculpture in the Wild

Sam Clayton/Mark Jacobs (UK)​  2023

BLACKFOOT PATHWAYS: SCULPTURE IN THE WILD

Mark Jacobs

Mark Jacobs is an artist, maker and project manager based in the High Peak in the UK. Mark studied sculpture at Sheffield Hallam University. After leaving university he pursued another love – for historic buildings – for a few years before returning full time to the world of fine art. Over the 20 years since then Mark has been working collaboratively with Sam Clayton, throughout their interweaving careers as sculptors, makers and project managers pursuing shared interests in landscape, history and human interactions with their environment.

Mark has also worked for and with many internationally renowned artists and art institutions both in the UK and abroad. Mark is the director of a small arts company that helps both artists and arts establishments design, fabricate and install sculpture. As well as frequently helping with the fabrication of work for David Nash he has also had significant involvement in the UK tour of the “Weeping Window” and “Wave” poppies sculptures first seen at Windsor Castle.

More recently Mark has been working for the Duke of Devonshire’s Chatsworth Estate helping to realise “Releve”, the final work in the Beyond Limits collaboration with the Burning Man Festival, the centre piece of Chatsworth’s burn event of 2022.

Sam Clayton

Sam Clayton is a sculptor and production and project manager for the arts based in Yorkshire in the UK. Sam studied Sculpture Ba Hons at Sheffield Hallam University and Art as Environment Ma Manchester Metropolitan University. His practice is often in collaboration with fellow sculptor Mark Jacobs where they make site specific works, investigating environments through walking, maps and archive research and making installations based on what they find. They have undertaken residencies at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, Tatton Park in Cheshire and Blackfoot Pathways, Sculpture in the Wild in Lincoln Montana.

Sam is also Studio Manager for David Nash in Blaenau Ffestiniog, Wales and works as a freelance project manager often internationally for artists such as Andy Goldsworthy.

Current projects include an ambitious programme to commission artists (including Goldsworthy and Nash) to build sculptures that use natural flood management techniques to help prevent flooding in Calderdale, West Yorkshire.