By Tom Murray

As a loosely communal organization, Rob Willms, Ryan McCourt and Andrew French have been working together for years under the name of the North Edmonton Sculpture Workshop.

The three friends have already shown their sculptures together at the Royal Alberta Museum as part of the annual Big Things outdoor show, and according to Willms they're now "formalizing our organizational status."

"This is the first year that we've missed out on doing Big Things because of work going on around the museum," he notes. "The sculptures that we're showing at the Stollery Gallery are all new works."

The Stollery Gallery exhibition finds the three working in metal, but with differing approaches.

"Ryan's work for the exhibit is in animal and human figures, Andrew has wall-hung sculpture reliefs in aluminium, I have a figure in all of my work, but if there's a line between abstract and representational they're closer to abstract."

It's a good partnership between the three, with each unstinting in support as well as criticism when needed.

"We work together quite well," Willms notes. "If there's something practical that needs to be done at the studio and one of us is skilled at it, he takes it on."