The artist who created a likeness of the Island's founding father Sir George Somers and that of Johnny Barnes is opening a new gallery and sculpture garden.

The Desmond Fountain Gallery and Sculpture Garden is set in a quiet street in Smith's, but is open exclusively by appointment only.

The gallery houses works that Islanders have never seen, as well as a bronze which made UK headlines when his wife Luli thwarted an attempt by thieves to steal it at a gallery in Mayfair, London.

Mr. Fountain is an internationally acclaimed sculptor who is a Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors.

Last year, he won the Charman Prize for Sculpture 2008 at the Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art and he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Bermuda Arts Council in 2003.

His work is held in both public and private collections and he has also authored a richly illustrated book, 'Desmond Fountain: Sculptor', which features a great deal of his art and technique.

Although born in Bermuda in 1946, Mr. Fountain spent much of his early years in Sierra Leone, West Africa.

Following his first art award in an adult exhibition aged six and selling his first piece at eleven, he pursued art studies in colleges at Stoke-on-Trent and Exeter.

While at the Stoke-on-Trent College of Art, his work took on a new form when the institution opened a department for figurative sculpture, as they could tell how strong this side of his work was from his other areas of art and media.

They put him on his own in that department and there was only one question: "What do you want to do?"

He explained that the first thing he did was a life size female nude and that is how it all started.

He says he was probably about 17 when that happened and wasn't interested in figurative sculpture, as it was totally unfashionable.

"I was bucking the trends. I guess it paid off, didn't it!?" Regarding commissions, Mr. Fountain explained: "To make a life sized child, these days, it takes me in the region of about a month now, because I want to take longer over it and I don't have the same type of frenetic energy that I had when I was much younger, where I would make a life size in 10 days.

"But they didn't have the same details or level of finish in those days, so I tend to enjoy doing them, I take more pleasure and longer time now, but I don't accept so many commissions these days."

Mr. Fountain never abandons his pieces until they are in a finished state.

He said it could often be an exhausting process: "I have said: 'sculpture is like two percent inspiration and 98 percent perspiration'.

"After I actually make the sculpture, it doesn't stop there. I then accompany it to the foundry.

"I am usually a part of the decision making of where it will be cut to make the mould and then I check the wax, which is taken out of the mould to make the bronze.

"I then check the bronze and I usually am there for the putting together of the pieces."

He said his sculpture, the Minstrel, was cast in 35 separate pieces which all had to be put back together properly. "I am there all that time as well," he said. "It is a very hands-on way of working."

He describes the process of creating his interpretation of someone or something as very intimate.

"I have them in front of me and I model the material, I make that image, and the whole thing is modelled by my hands," said the sculptor. "So it is an interpretation of what they are that I make."

Mr. Fountain, who spends most of his time at foundries between France and England, said his new space was both a physical and virtual gallery, with a garden featuring characters sitting on benches.

To contact Mr. Fountain visit www.desmondfountain.co.uk or call 441-747-3955 to schedule an appointment.