Are you this mysterious Yorkshire sculptor?

Puzzled residents across Yorkshire are turning detective after mysterious stone heads were left outside their properties in the dead of night.

The sculptures feature the same carved symbol and come with a riddle attached. Despite CCTV film showing a man leaving three heads outside a post office, their origin remains unknown. So far, 12 have appeared in Goathland and Kilburn, North Yorkshire; four in Arthington, West Yorkshire and three in Braithwell in South Yorkshire.

Each of the heads, which are up to a foot tall, looks different but all feature the same carving - which appears to spell out the word "paradox" - and a note bearing the riddle: "Twinkle twinkle like a star does love blaze less from afar?" The villages they have been found in are up to 50 miles from each other. Mike and Valerie Hoyes, who run a post office in Braithwell, found three heads outside their business on the morning of 23 August.



We would love to meet or find out who it is, whoever it is is extremely talented Fiona Gould, owner of the Forresters Arms Hotel, Kilburn


Checking their CCTV footage, they discovered a man they did not know dropping off the stones in a small car at around 0400 BST. They have since given the tape to the police. Mrs Hoyes said: "It's very weird.
"They're a bit like gargoyles really, obviously somebody has taken a lot of trouble if they have been carved. "On the back it looks like an occult thing, it does actually spell paradox, but we don't know what any of it means."

The heads have been found in villages 50 miles apart.

George Griffiths, an artist from Arthington, near Leeds, also received one of the heads on 23 August and then found another outside his house two weeks later. After speaking to friends and neighbours he became aware of two more of the sculptures being left in the village.

Stonemasons quizzed.

He contacted stonemasons at York Minster in an effort to trace what appeared to be a mason's mark on his heads but said nobody had ever seen anything like it before. He also turned to the internet and dictionaries to try to find out details about the rhyme but again drew a blank.

Mr Griffiths said: "I think it's a publicity stunt - I can't see anything else.
"They're not sinister or anything like that, it's just a puzzle. We're all just waiting and wondering to find out more." Fiona Gould, the owner of the Forresters Arms Hotel in Kilburn, received her head last month. She said: "He turned up a week last Monday between 1.30am and 7.30am. I opened the door and there he was, as large as life, sat on the patio." She iscovered that five more heads had appeared in Kilburn and another six in nearby Goathland. Miss Gould's head now has pride of place on the bar in her pub. "We would love to meet or find out who it is, whoever it is is extremely talented," she added.

from the Beeb here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7022091.stm

It wasn't me

embee wrote:It wasn't me

Don't believe you

Yeah. I love my sculpting so much, I'll travel 300 miles to put it in amongst the most culturally bereft people in the country. The way they beat their wives is an art form though. Not a mark on them. Soap in a towel I reckon.

Michael Vaughan struggling to pass the time now that he's no longer in the one day team?

He'd be bette off sculpting himself a new knee first...

Well there you go, Look North says its some bloke called Billy Johnson who is currently living abroad in a tent somewhere.

Apparently he scattered them around while drinking champagne and driving his car through the east end streets (of Leeds) to the city. He was quoted as saying "I borrowed some tools to chisel them down, tie me up and i'll confess - a thousand ways that i'll make you statuesque..."

Maybe it was just a bunch of pot heads pretending they were sculptures.

Gaz-top. What an avatar! Shame there isn't 'Diamond Lights' playing at the minute.

Batfink Begins wrote:Gaz-top. What an avatar! Shame there isn't 'Diamond Lights' playing at the minute.

Avatar of a man with a seriously bad hair-day!

ps not Bob.

Less a man, more a god. Or a minor deity of some description at least.

Business-at-front, party-at-back is the way forward.

Gary 111 wrote:Less a man, more a god. Or a minor deity of some description at least.

Business-at-front, party-at-back is the way forward.

A-HA-HA-HA!!!! That's a f'kin awesome description of a mullet.
He was a demi-god. I mean, he was saved from a public thrashing after the "Hoddle&Waddle" collaboration by that simple fact.

Batfink Begins wrote:

Gary 111 wrote:Less a man, more a god. Or a minor deity of some description at least.

Business-at-front, party-at-back is the way forward.

A-HA-HA-HA!!!! That's a f'kin awesome description of a mullet.
He was a demi-god. I mean, he was saved from a public thrashing after the "Hoddle&Waddle" collaboration by that simple fact.

That's how Dizzy described his mullet . . .

tac wrote:
That's how Dizzy described his mullet . . .

Never heard it before. I may grow one just to use that statement.

Yeah, that description has been around a while - wish I could lay claim to it, but i can't.

Anyway, here's our hero once more, sans mullet but continuing the fine musical traditions he started with Diamond Lights. But if that was more of an old-fashioned love ballad to clutch at your heart strings, then this is riding on the wave of acid house, the ecstasy generation and new wave psychedelia. A contemporary tale of lust, passion, despair, and erm, having a feeling.