A nice, artistic way of spitting at the audience

Laurent Mellet is an artist who makes kinetic, fire and water-spitting sculpture. He has had pieces in the Dublin St Patrick's Day parade for the past three years.I hate that sort of naked-people-throwing-raw-meat-around performance-art stuff. I think my own work is more straightforward "drama" than "performance". I don't function well in the normal run of things, so I chose sculpture as a medium because it has no rules. No one can tell you what you're doing is right or wrong. You have only you're own standard to reach - which is actually the hardest standard of all.

Robotics, solenoid valves, pneumatics, belt-drive motors, clouds of steam, fire and water - that's the sort of stuff that really excites me. And I think the movement and fire give people a thrill to watch. I was in Paris the other week and I went to the Picasso Museum. There were kids being brought around by their teacher and she was telling them they could make similar sculptures at home with Plasticene - which is true. The French are more open to eccentric quirkiness. They don't have to have a reason, when it comes to art. They are more open to being raw - I hate the polished stuff of uptown art galleries and museums.

This year I had three pieces in the parade. One of them was a modified tractor. I used one of the first tractors in Ireland, a Ferguson 20 TVO. Everyone has a story about the Ferguson 20 TVO; there are top Irish businessmen in America who learned how to drive on them - in fact, they're more Irish than leprechauns.

It took me a while to get one. I asked anyone I met if they knew where I could get one, drove all around the country knocking on doors, until I finally found one in an old shed. After that experience I think the government should set up a Department of Surrealism - people just got totally caught up in the adventure and loved being involved in the search. I built three metal horses onto the front of the tractor and I built a series of wheels and cogs around the tractor, a whole complicated mechanical structure which just spits out water. It's sort of abstract mechanics leading nowhere. The second piece was a JCB turned into a huge dinosaur going backwards. It was all hydraulics and movement. The third piece was influenced by a beautifully drawn cartoon which appeared in the New York Herald in the 1920s. There was a small person asleep in a bed (my girlfriend) being attacked by a puppet dragon and an Egyptian dog (me). These two characters swing out 14 feet in the air above the crowd and into the bed, attacking the child with smoke and fire shooting out of us. The pieces for the parade were all more theatrical than just pieces of sculpture.

I don't have a typical day, but often I would get up at 7.30 a.m. and read for a while. At the moment I'm reading about the history of flight. I like that time of the day, it's really peaceful and there are no distractions. It helps you organise your head - if you jump up into the middle of the day everything is a panic. Then when the offices open I do my business calls. I make lamps out of bronze which are pretty cubist, working to commission - stuff which brings in the pennies. I'd spend a while getting the "admin" done, doing things we all hate doing. Then I might drive off, pick up what I need and spend the rest of the day working in the studio.

I go home at about 9 p.m. I'd spend a while trying to find a good hiding place for my car. It's an old Land Rover I've stripped down, and people love setting it on fire, so I have to put it somewhere it won't be found. Then I eat and get back to some sort of work - maybe accounts, maybe some drawing, or I might read a bit. Late at night is another quiet time when you can get a lot of work done. I generally get to bed around 1 a.m. Sunday is the day off. But I'm flexible, I fit the day around what's going on and what my girlfriend's schedule is.

Reactions to the work are mixed, people come up and say "what's that piece of shite?" or they're blown away and think it's brilliant. The beauty of human nature is our dreams. The work I do is about trying to make the world a more magical place. It's a very privileged job in one way - I get to spend my day dreaming and creating, expressing a love of life. I often think about how lucky I am that I have such a passion. Lots of people have nothing that turns them on so they get sucked in by the bullshit of advertising. To me it would be terrifying to wake up and wonder, what will I be?

In an interview with Jackie Bourke