ARTIST Jack Wright had stars in his eyes when he looked up for inspiration to create a focal point for a new outdoor events forum.

He was commissioned by the Mill Gate Centre to create a stunning visitor attraction for the Bury Lions Garden on Crompton Street, which will be used as venue for live music and drama.

The result so far is Jack's heavenly design in which eight giant panels will represent the night sky with engraved sheets of metal and fibre optics. Giant frames to house the engravings are already in place.

Two of the panels will symbolise the North and South Poles, with others depicting star clusters in the rest of the sky, but Jack, who created the well-known "Nailing Home" sculpture on Ainsworth Road in Radcliffe, will employ a significant amount of artistic licence.

He said: "I'm hoping that people will be able to read it in quite a few different ways. It's an interpretive piece and is not supposed to be a scientific mapping of the stars. "The orientation of the night sky used will be relevant as seen from Bury, so I hope it will work in a number of ways, being educational, informative, decorative and celebratory."

Jack is now busy engraving representations of major constellations such as Pegasus, Orion and the Plough onto the stainless steel sheets.

And because his usual studio at Bury's Met arts centre was too small to finish work on the panels, Jack was offered the space to spread his artistic wings in the Market Street building of the Bury TImes .

The design was inspired by the historical connections between theatre and the sky, particularly in the drama of ancient Greece, and its emphasis on the fact that fate was written in the stars.

"The sky has traditionally helped us to mark particular moments, through days, months years and now the Millennium," said Jack, pictured showing off two designs for engravings which will incorporate fibre optics to represent stars of different shapes and sizes.

"I see this as an ideal opportunity to relate the event in a way that will still be relevant for a very long time."

A giant circular calendar has now been laid in the garden showing the days and months of the year and zodiac signs.

Engraved sheets will be put into the frames in March, with fibre optic lights that represent the stars being installed soon afterwards.

The events forum is a project involving the Mill Gate Centre, Bury Council and Bury Lions and will be made available for local theatre groups and musicians to give open air performances.

The landscaped area has been designed around existing trees, with a specially laid floor of York Stone.