Dan was selected as the Montgomery Sculpture Trust Artist in Residence for 2002 after his work was seen at Thursday Plantation in New South Wales. Daniel is from Byron Bay, New South Wales and is the first Australian artist to be selected as Artist in Residence by the Trustees of the Montgomery Sculpture Trust. Daniel’s proposal was to use recycled material, salvaged from car bodies utilising hidden aesthetic qualities, which he sees in such materials. His work is not bound by traditional themes or divisions between labels such as abstract or figurative, fact or phantasy and includes contemporising myth and the use of recycled materials.

The artist was able to visit many galleries and places of interest during his stay and has taken back many ideas to Novosibirsk where he works as a teacher and artist.

The idea for this commission carried on from the earlier piece Bonnet Ball, a 4m-diameter construction made from similar recycled car bonnet materials, which was acquired for the Tea Tree Plantation Collection in NSW.

Dan worked for three months in the Summer of 2003 in difficult, improvised circumstances with the Trust to set up his studio and to proceed with this commission. Bonnet Spheres was made at the site of the Trust’s collection with the help of Adam Ward.

The work Bonnet Spheres is essentially an assemblage, an installation, a repeated structure, a single idea, a recycled structure, a work of geometry, figurative and abstract, accessible and refined, simple and complicated, serious and playful. The sculpture has a powerful presence and is intentionally mobile. Its effect in space and upon surroundings is dramatic and essentially different from its predecessor a single immobile sphere. Daniels next planned work uses bulldozers and a three-acre site in New South Wales. His work is in private collections in Japan, USA, Australia, Monaco, New Zealand as well as the UK.