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NEIL FERBER was born in South Wales and attended Bulmershe College, Reading, where he studied sculpture under Dennis Harland and Alf Parks, both of whom had left head of department jobs art Leeds Art College to run a new Art Department at the Reading College. He then taught for five years in Northamptonshire and Co. Durham, before moving to Appleby in Westmorland in 1978, where be bought Bongate Mill, a derelict watermill. He set up sculpture and ceramics workshops in the building and opened an art gallery on the ground floor. He exhibited his sculpture annually in Bongate Mill Gallery as well as taking part in local exhibitions at Tullie House Carlisle and Abbot Hall in Kendal. He was the recipient of a Northern Arts Award in 1987. In 2001 he visited Tuscany and met Fiore de Henriquez, an Italian Sculptor who introduced him to Pietrasanta, a small town near the Carrara marble quaries, that has for centuries been famed for the production of sculpture. Over the next few years he returned to Tuscany many times, eventually working in Fiore De Henriquez’s studio at Peralta, the medieval hamlet which she restored. He started to cast his work into bronze and take advantage of the many marble workshops that exist in Pietrasanta, where he now lives and works. In 2005 he exhibited with painter Phil Morsman in La Mec Gallery, ^[1] in Vicenza. Italy. Then again in 2008 took part in a group show at Casa Palladio in Vicenza. ^[2]

Reclusive and individualist he has exhibited only occasionally. He has always avoided following fashionable or commercial trends in art, believing in the traditional values of fine art techniques. Through a period of many varying styles and trends he has consistently worked in an abstract mode, modelling in clay or wax and casting sculptures in a variety of modern materials, experimenting with different textures and finishes. Since moving to Italy his work has become more architectural, using clay to explore the formal language of sculpture concentrating on the relationships of mass and space. These explorations are then cast into plaster and the result used as a model for carving in marble. The main influences throughout his career have been European - looking towards Brancusi and Eduardo Chillida.

In 1989 he founded and organised the Appleby Jazz Festival ^[3] which took place annualy for 18 years in the Cumbrian town of Appleby. First in Appleby Castle then in a riverside field next to his studio and home at Bongate Mill. It was a festival dedicated to promoting British improvised music and musicians such as Stan Tracey, Art Themen, Peter King and Don Weller appeared every Year. Through the festival he became involved in commissioning new music, touring bands and CD recording. The extended work load and funding difficulties led to him closing the festival in 2007 deciding to concentrate solely on his sculpture.

He is now married to author Kathleen Jones and together they run The Book Mill, a small publishing company. So far it published work by Kathleen Jones, Jan Marsh and Angela Locke ^[4].