Lucas Norris was born in 2001, in Lincolnshire. Initially trained in vehicle maintenance, Lucas worked in an engineering supplies company until he attended a taster session of blacksmithing that changed the trajectory of his career. Norris enrolled at Hereford College of Arts as an artist blacksmith in 2023, and has since trained in a range of contemporary and traditional blacksmithing techniques.

Throughout the duration of his time at Hereford College of Arts, Lucas has exhibited work publicly, as well as having been awarded a bursary from the Worshipful Company of Blacksmiths.

Lucas works across drawing, making and writing to produce a cycle of ‘journal entries’ that allow for reflection on life experiences both how himself as a maker, and in a wider sense for the viewer.

Lucas will exhibit his final body of work ‘into focus’ in Hereford in June; at New Designers in London in July; at Royal Hibernian Academy of Art in Dublin in August, and as part of Cluster Metal’s ‘Anneal 2026’ exhibition in November.

Following graduation, Lucas intends to collaborate with Sacrewell Farm in Whittering to develop his emerging creative practice of forged reflections.

Lucas Norris is a sculptor who creates abstract works which explore formal qualities in forged steel. He embraces traditional and contemporary blacksmithing techniques, favouring processes of shearing, subtle mark-making using set hammers, hot cut butchers, hand fullering and mirror polished accents.

Lucas’s artworks were initially motivated through conscious consideration of people and incidents from his past, significant moments along the path that led Lucas to his Artist Blacksmithing degree at Hereford College of Arts. As his creative process has become established, he is now in a cyclic process of making, drawing on paper and in steel.

Charcoal drawing on paper is a vital complementary aspect of Norris’s practice, but rather than ‘designing’ on paper, it parallels actions that are then revisited in the forge. Rhythms, shapes, marks, expressive gestures embodied through studio work are explored intuitively through steel.

Norris’s views the forged sculptures resulting from this cycle as journal entries. Once he has completed a sculpture, he sits with it, reflects, and writes. In these reflections, the sculpture’s narrative reveals itself. Allowing subconscious acts whilst making to come to the surface. Lucas processes material to process life; and then invites the viewer to share in this meditative space the artwork holds.