Exploring Dylan Lewis’s Space

WORDS Emily Pettit-Coetzee PHOTOS David Ross

More at home in nature than anywhere else, internationally acclaimed sculptor Dylan Lewis has created a collaborative space that combines his work, his family and his beloved landscape.

What does home mean to you? Perhaps it’s four walls and family, or wherever you choose to rest your head. However you interpret it, the home is more than just a place; it’s where the heart is.

World-renowned artist and sculptor Dylan Lewis’ heart is lost somewhere in the wild. “I have the grounding of family and that is one kind of home. Then there is obviously my home in the aesthetic sense, which is the manifestation of an inner place reflected outwardly in concrete proportions and materials. And, because I am a loner, I find balance by retreating to my spiritual home, which is the wilderness.”

The place that Dylan, his wife Karen, and the youngest three of his five children have settled is Mulberry Farm on the rustic slopes of the Stellenbosch mountains in the Western Cape. The family resides on the property and, from here, he also manages the business of being one of the world’s foremost figures in contemporary sculpture.

Born in Johannesburg in 1964, Dylan’s parents relocated the family to Hout Bay in the Western Cape when he was still a baby. Hailing from a bloodline of notable artists, it seems inevitable that he would be gifted. His late father Robin Lewis was a sculptor famous for his bird forms, and his mother Valerie and maternal grandmother Renée Hughes are both accomplished painters.

“I particularly remember my grandmother’s studio at her home in Hermanus, where I used to spend summer holidays. The house was suffused with scents of whisky and turpentine and the sea, and its walls were covered with vibrant Fauvist paintings of human figures.”

Dylan describes other early memories as being filled with the presence of the mountains and the ocean. He is a devoted surfer, but when it was time to choose a place to settle, his heart was drawn more to the mountain.

When they moved onto Mulberry Farm in 1993, aside from the cottage they lived in, the only other building on the land was an old apple-packing shed, which he converted into a bronze foundry. Today it has been transformed yet again into a bright, airy gallery dedicated to showcasing his work. It’s a creative space filled with completed works, more in progress, sketches dating back to his childhood, and interesting artefacts he has discovered on the land – from prehistoric axe heads to animal skulls, all carefully displayed in elegant cabinets designed and built by Dylan himself.

The family resides in a property that is situated just above a sculpture garden, which covers seven hectares of “untamed” scrublands. In truth, the land has been carefully moulded in order to best display the sculptures while retaining harmony with the natural surrounds.

This landscaping process has taken seven years, and was first dreamt up by Dylan when earth-moving equipment was hired to flatten some of the land around their house.

The couple wanted to create a patch of level ground so the kids could play without fear of disappearing down the steep mountain slope. “I became completely fascinated by this levelling process. For a year, I was mesmerised by this excavator, and used it to move and shape the land with a view to eventually turning it into a sculpture garden,” says Dylan.

It was a collaborative effort between Dylan and Karen, plant expert and technical gardener Fiona Powrie and garden designer Franchesca Watson.

“Dylan called me in when he’d already spent six months or so sculpting the space with an excavator. He had made the lake and the streams, done most of the moulding, and had managed to move some of the trees around,” says Franchesca. “The first couple of months, we talked about what he wanted to achieve, and looked at images of places and plants. He spends a lot of time in nature and takes inspiration from this, so he is more articulate than many clients. He knew what he wanted and my role was to distil his ideas and arrange them into something that could become a reality,” she recalls.

Because the soils and aspects of the slopes had to be taken into consideration, the mostly indigenous plants are segregated into zones – there is an aganthosma [buchu] hill and an area of restios and sedges, for example. “We have also planted all the forms of Erica verticillata, extinct in the wild,” says Fiona.

Positioned most carefully on and around these hills and slopes are some of Dylan’s most powerful and potentially disturbing works – cowering human forms, bent over in agony, while others are coiled and bursting with a pent-up energy that’s palpable in every gouge and indentation on their undulating surfaces.

These formidable beasts can’t help but arouse emotion. Seen in situ, with the mountain towering behind and the great vistas of the Cape winelands stretching out below, it’s an intensely moving, other-worldly experience – as if you’ve slipped suddenly into a parallel Narnia-esque universe, where great horned beasts hover on the waters and winged, celestial seraphim watch from above.

Dylan originally became known for his large African cat sculptures, choosing them as a metaphor to convey his deep love of the rugged landscapes they inhabit. Since 2009, he has focused on the human form and an integration between human, animal and earth. Despite comment by a small faction that there is some dark, subversive meaning behind this, the truth is that they actually have nothing to do with the religious concept of Satan, but rather as Dylan describes it, they “explore modern man’s physical and psychological relationship to the environment”.

Today, his interpretation of this relationship through his work has gained him huge international recognition. Despite his rise to fame, however, Dylan remains unequivocally himself – a surfer guy, passionate about the ocean and the wilderness that surrounds the small patch of mountain he calls home.

This article was originally featured in IMAGINE.