The Glitz and Glamour Of Dog Shows

Artist At Crufts Dog Show

Sculptor realizes her dream of exhibiting her life size sculptures at Crufts Dog Show in order to raise awareness for and support for all ii Brachycephalic breeds.

February 10, 2020 | TheDogPress.com

Louise Jarvis, Artist

I am a British artist/sculptor and will be exhibiting my life size dog sculptures at Crufts in March 2020. I wish to raise awareness and support breeders in Brachycephalic breeds of dog. By doing so I aim to promote good health testing and breeding, making these bull breeds that have had a lot of bad press healthier and remove the negative association with these lovely and very popular breeds of dog.

It was my dream to exhibit at CRUFTS as it is the BIGGEST dog show in the world and I set about to create sculptures of some of the most famous dog showing kennels and dogs in the showing world.

November 2019 marked my 10th birthday as a full time animal artist and I thought there was no better way to celebrate 10 years as a full time professional artist that to apply to exhibit at Crufts the most famous dog show in the world. It is the hardest show to get a trade stand space at and always was a dream to one day exhibit at it. My application was successful and I was over the moon.

My business began for the first 8 years solely in portraiture and it is only in the last 2 years that I have added sculpture to my list of services I offer my clients. Following on from studying an MFA where I made my first sculpture, 11 years on from graduating with a BA from Duncan of Jordanstone college of art and design in Dundee. I have personally been to Crufts Dog Show and I in fact presented two portraits in 2012 as surprise presents in the show ring.

Upon receiving the news that my trade stand application had been successful, with a wing and a prayer, I contacted some of the largest kennel names in the showing world. I had a rough idea of the breeds that I would love to include, Kennels such as CASTLEROCK, FARLAP, THORNAPPLE and AFTERGLOW amongst others. I have breeds which are close to my heart as well as breeds which I thought visually would compliment each other. I was utterly astounded that the kennels whom I contacted were as enthusiastic about me sculpting their dogs as I was in creating them.

From day one I knew that I wanted a BULLDOG to be my show-stopper piece. Two reasons, one the first being that the Bulldog is British, it stands for British breeding and with the Crufts Dog Show attracting visitors from all over the world the bulldog was a flagship breed for Britain. The second most important reason reason was that the Bulldog has not had an easy time of late and as a bracycephalic breed it has been under a lot of scrutiny in recent years.

With 10,000+ registrations in 2018 with the kennel club it is a very popular Breed of dog and there was a lot of bad publicity regarding the health of the breed and other Bracycephalic breeds inc the French Bulldog, Pug and Boston Terrier to name a few. Breeders are being advised to extensively health test these breeds before breeding and good breeders will do this without hesitation. I wanted to showcase the good work that these breeders are doing to better the heath of their dogs.

I put a call out to Bulldog breeders. IR CH Carasmel Henryetta has bags of personality and I knew she would be perfect for my stand. She has the sweetest sour expression and creating her as a life size sculpture didn’t come without its challenges; 72kg of clay was used - she weighs 55kg and the physical challenge of creating a life size sculpture was new, exciting and utterly terrifying. 110 hours later she is sculpted, underglazed and ready to be fired to be ready for the big reveal at Crufts. I chose to only have one life size full body sculpture on my stand, to pinpoint the focus on the bulldog but also due to limited space.

The other life sized busts range from 8” in height to 18” in height and include a Great Dane from the GARSAK Great Dane kennel (UK), A beautiful Australian Shepherd from THORNAPPLE kennel in the US, A Scottish Terrier and Sealyham Terrier from the AFTERGLOW kennel also in the US, an English Mastiff from CYBRUS Mastiff kennel (UK), a Bloodhound from FARLAP kennel (UK) A Rottweiller from VON DER ALTEN FESTUNG Kennel (Croatia), a Pomeranian from CARRIPOM Kennel (UK) and last but not least, the most famous dog who was mum to 2015’s Crufts RBIS (reserve best in show) “Dublin” the Flatcoat Retriever owned and bred by the world famous CASTLEROCK Kennel.

These kennels are known across the world for their show dogs and for me to work with them was the greatest experience ever. There was a huge amount of pressure to make sure the sculptures were hair by hair accurate but as I finish up sculpting the last one of them I can hand on heart say that every Kennel was delighted with the sculpture I did for them and we all cannot wait to see them fired and finished off and on display at Crufts in March.

I recently created a bronze sculpture of top UK Gundog trainer Ben Randall’s double cocker championship winner - cocker spaniel bitch FTCH Heolybtwch Fatty.

When Ben Randall contacted me to do a sculpture of Fatty I was overjoyed. Having known how successful Fatty is in the gundog world and especially the Cocker Spaniel world I was both terrified and ecstatic at the same time. The resulting sculpture launched my Bronze sculpture and it is also something I offer clients who have a slightly larger budget or prefer the finish of bronze over Ceramics.

I look forward to meeting everyone at Crufts March 5-8th, 2020, Birmingham NEC. My stand will be in Hall 1, Stand 127, if you are interested in any of my work please get in touch, www.louisejarvis.co.uk, phone: +447738165748 (UK) or email Louise Jarvis.

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