Frank Roper (artist)

He died at the end of 2000. In 2014 an exhibition marking the centenary year of his birth was held at the Travellers Gallery, Barry. A memorial service at Llandaff Cathedral was held on the centenary date, 12 December 2014. The "Frank Roper Centre" opened in February 2019 at the Church of the Resurrection in Ely, Cardiff; a permanent exhibition of Roper's life and works.

Modelling in expanded polystyrene allowed Roper to work on a larger scale. It is light and strong, enabling complicated structures to be built. The lower cost of aluminium, compared to bronze for example, made it possible to use sculpture where normally there would not be sufficient money available. Having his own home foundry also kept costs down and allowed for a very direct relationship with the finished work – "conception, creation and casting became one continuous process" he told the Church Times in 1994.

Roper was awarded the MBE in 1991 for his services to art.

In the 1976 BBC documentary Look Stranger, Roper explains that he would sculpt from a solid block of expanded polystyrene using a hot wire, soldering irons, home-made whittlers and sand-paper:

Two BBC television programmes were made about Roper, one in 1964 ("Mind into Metal – Frank Roper, Sculptor") and the other in 1976 ("Look, Stranger: Sculpture and Singing Fountains", in which Roper was interviewed by René Cutforth). Roper's non-religious sculpture includes cast aluminium figures of birds and animals, some of which were animated; and fountains that produced musical sounds using the principle of the water organ.

Roper was one of the first sculptors to adopt the lost-polystyrene method, almost always casting in aluminium, perfecting the technique in 1964. It is now used widely in manufacturing (known as lost-foam casting).

His work for Christ Church in Roath (1964) may have been his first commission using the lost-polystyrene method, a casting process recognisable by the texture of the metal, as the pitted nature of the expanded polystyrene remains visible.

Many of Roper's early commissions stemmed from the need to repair places of worship after they had suffered bomb damage during World War II. He went on to become one of the most prolific of all post-War artists undertaking church commissions. His major commissions included work for Llandaff Cathedral, Durham Cathedral, St David's Cathedral in Pembrokeshire and Peterborough Cathedral. He created a wall-mounted "Stations of the Cross" (1959) for St Martin's in Roath, Cardiff, "Crucifixion with Mary and John" (1965) outside St German's Church, Adamsdown, Cardiff and an aluminium reredos screen (1968) for St Martin le Grand, York. Roper also created engraved and stained glass, for example at St Peter's Church, Chippenham.

Over his career Roper worked in wood, stone and bronze, but many of his ecclesiastical commissions, as well as his musical fountains and water clocks, were cast in aluminium. He became interested in aluminium in the 1950s; the Stations of the Cross for St Martin's in Roath, Cardiff, completed in 1959, were an early example of his religious art in the metal.

Frank Roper MBE (12 December 1914 – 3 December 2000) was a British sculptor and stained-glass artist who undertook commissions for churches and cathedrals across Wales and England.

Frank Roper was born 12 December 1914 in Haworth, Yorkshire. He studied at Keighley Art School (meeting his future wife, Nora Ellison) and the Royal College of Art, London, where he was a student of Henry Moore. In 1947 he became a sculpture lecturer at Cardiff College of Art, later vice principal until 1964. He retired from the college in 1973 "to be free to play my own games". He lived in Penarth and created his own foundry on the ground floor of his house where he made his metal sculptures. Roper has been credited with inventing the lost-polystyrene casting process.