When Lucy Milne presents her artwork to bereaved families she often receives the tightest of hugs of her life.
She makes sculptures cast from the hands of dead and dying people as a last reminder for their loved ones.
Her work takes her to funeral homes and to hospices in people’s final hours.
And while she usually casts the hands of elderly people it can sometimes by the tiny hands or faces or babies or children.
Lucy, 36, says: “I feel like what I am doing is almost like a legacy.”
When the artist and mum-of-four opened Lumilo Casting Studio four years ago, she did all sorts of casts. Couples holding hands, babies’ feet, even busts and bums.
But she now focuses on memorials and is so busy she has drafted in a second artist, Meggan Foulis, as her business partner.
She says: “When I first went into this job I never thought in a million years I’d be going to funeral homes.”
From computer games to body casting
But Lucy feels incredibly honoured to be invited into people’s final moments to create something so special.
Lucy used to work in the computer games industry but did a career u-turn during maternity leave.
She explains: “When I became a mum I found that what I appreciated in art was the sentimental side of it.
“One day I was online and a photograph came up of a hand-casting. I had never seen anything like it and my first instinct was to look into getting that done for my family.
“When I did they had training courses and it was absolutely what I wanted to do.”
Lucy trained in Edinburgh and three years later opened her studio.
She would post pictures and the stories behind her casts on social media.
End-of-life casting captured attention
And it was one of her first end-of-life castings that really gained traction.
Lucy had been so moved to read of a teenage girl who was dying of cancer that she had offered her services to her family.
She also now works with a charity, Carlo and Marti’s Fund, who contribute towards casts for those who have lost babies.
This work, she says, is so important to the families who commission it that she has decided to make it her core business.
She says: “There’s very little notice when those casts are needed. I might get a call in the morning saying someone is in their final hours can you come and do a cast? So I have to drop everything and do that.”
Lucy uses the same material, alginate, as dentists use to make a mould of the body part. She then uses this to create her artwork in her studio in Strathmartine Road.
“When the family come to the collect the piece, I can’t describe how amazing that feels,” Lucy says. “I’ve never had hugs that tight in my life.
Lucy has been told by mums who have lost babies that they kiss their face casts goodnight and include them in family photos.
She says: “I’m doing something I love, creating, and in that process I’m affecting someone’s grief process for the rest of their life.
“Every day they will be reminded of something special you did for them.”
Conversation