By Heidi Trautmann

When you come to Sevcan’s place in Agırdağ on the south side of the Kyrenia mountains you will be wondering who that nice guy is sitting in the garden, and you raise your hand and put on a smile of greeting until you recognize that this gentleman is made of clay in full body size.

We are coming to Agırdağ once a week to learn the secrets of sculpture in clay, or rather how to work with clay for a portrait, a statue or a mask, for big volume pieces without seeing them collapse during the process and without having cracks in the fired product. We are helped along all the way and are most probably going for many months to come if we want to produce pieces that satisfy us as well.

You must not think that drawing from life and sculpting from life drawings is one and the same thing; it is not, rest assured. Your knowledge of anatomy is restricted to flat drawings, now you are really asked to confess that you have not learnt your lesson properly.

There is Anne Hughes doing a cat, Catherine Bayley creating a pair of hands, Gülseven Coles a dancing dervish, Christine Venediger remembers her forefathers and does a troll, Gönen Atakol thinks of inviting us for a lasagna with her newly created big oven pan, Tüneysel Yayagli obviously plans to build another house with all the huge vases and column heads she has worked on, Muriel Clutten has created an African head and Heidi Trautmann has been working on her idea of star gazers.

Sevcan is very happy with our group as her teaching is absorbed in our heads and put to action.  While we work lovely music is played and around us we find all the life size women and men she has created and are occupying the chairs in her living room; even her dogs accept these figures as substitute for her love and lie at their feet, but I have seen that they prefer the young and beautiful ones.

I have received so many letters from interested people asking if they could take lessons as well and I asked Sevcan and she said Yes, they can contact me.

Sevcan Cerkez, tel (0392) 234 6875 and 0533 862 2875

Email: sevcancerkez@yahoo.com