Direct Carving
My great teacher, Tom Blodgett, said: "The creative act is one of desperation." The logic behind this is that if you are doing something you know how to do, you may be very good at it, but you are just repeating something you have learned before. Whereas when you really go out on a limb, when you have no solutions, when you are about to fail, that is when adrenaline kicks in and you pull out the creative act. I attempt to put myself in the most critical and dangerous situations to ensure that this principle keeps me on my toes scrambling for solutions. Putting the whole project in jeopardy is the best way to make it a success. I'll take a stone I have spent months to obtain and thousands of dollars to purchase, then blast into it with heavy machines, with no idea what I am doing. Or paint a scene in the last light of day, knowing that the light is changing every minute. That is the way it feels to create. There is a time towards the end when you can slow down and carefully carve or paint in the finishing touches, when the experience is calmer. But the bulk of the time it is a near mortal battle. Creativity = Desperation.
In the quarry I select blocks of quality but also what they call “Informe,” or stone without cuts, if possible. They are just raw hunks of stone off the mountain. This insures that they are unique pieces that can never be found again, much the way every snow-flake is unique. All the outside surfaces are natural and already have a patina of eons. But for the purpose of this exercise we can also pretend it is a cut cube of the purest stone. Once I get the block off the mountain and it is standing in my studio I remove 30% of the weight of the block. Starting with a 9 ton block, I must remove 3 tons. I can remove a ton a day easy, so within the first few days I will have the block down to 6 tons. This stone would be removed using a drill and splitting wedges with feathers and a diamond saw, point and hammer. Feather and Wedges are a quarrying technique that splits off massive pieces. I have learned to be fairly controlled and can take off 100-to-200-pound hunks at a time with a single hole. The first and largest pieces can be up to 800 pounds. While doing this I am thinking, "Composition is King." I am putting movement into the block and counter movements, accents, big strokes, medium strokes, and small strokes. It is like music; you have to have a variety of notes. So for about 3 days, no images, only abstract concepts of design and layout should influence the stone. Make it the best abstract sculpture ever carved. Do honor to Brancussi and Moore and others who fought to free us from what had become stale Neoclassicism. I tell my students: you can’t make a mistake if you don’t know what you are doing. When that block is singing it will start to happen. I come back from lunch or arrive early one morning and suddenly I see the first image. I try to get about seven images to play with, so I have multiple choices. The brain only utilizes the available material; all the stone I took off is gone. The image usually does not present itself to me unless the material is there to carve. Often I will see between 50-80 percent of my image. I then start where I see things the clearest and begin to carve only profiles. Profiles are lines learned in drawing. That is why drawing is so tied to sculpture. A line is either right or wrong. If it needs changing, I decide on the new line and cut it until I see sky. I move 5 degrees and cut another profile. With every stroke the image becomes more evident; it becomes obvious what stone to remove. Any questions, I stop and check a resource: a human model or an old drawing that will help me through the problem. I keep moving. Turn, cut; turn, cut; turn cut. Like peeling an onion the layers come off and I approach the surface. All the fun stuff happens in the last 1/2 an inch. The last modeling is pure heaven. I know I have a great sculpture by that time and before long I can be carving details.
They say in marble carving that one needs courage, passion and patience. I am terrified at the beginning of each new project. It is not only the fear of failure but also the realization of all the work that is going to have to be done in order to arrive at an acceptable outcome. There are so many ways it can go wrong. It takes courage to begin despite the odds. One can hope that some of our past experiences will come in handy. I come to each project armed with my skills. Still, in order for the creativity to come, I must push myself into new territory, to stretch those skills, put them to the test. This is why we need to be passionate about the work. If not, it is too easy to give up. That passion drives us out to the studio when others are resting. The patience gives us endurance for the long haul.
What drives me is curiosity, what does it feel like to carve a masterpiece? It is more of that passion, which is one of those building blocks of art. I get up in the dark so I can have my coffee and be ready when it gets light enough to go outside and work. I am also driven because I feel I am learning more every day. I can see my progress. Failures happen all the time, which cause delays, but experience teaches. Two nights ago, I broke a sculpture twice and in the end had to give up. The next day I tried another similar idea; this time I didn’t break it. I went on to try an even more difficult piece also without breaking it. So again I feel I learned something.
Some of us are given more opportunities than others to play and are encouraged instead of told to "be realistic—you’ll never be able to make a living.” I have very little to say about talent. I believe it has more to do with life experiences, opportunities and the time to be curious, teachers who come at the right time in life and possessing a spirit that is open to beauty doesn’t hurt. I feel so blessed to be on my path, to have something I am passionate about and bring so much joy to others. The daily rewards of the artistic life keep us going. Not to say that financial concerns are not very real and can be extremely distracting. One more word about failure. My gym teacher explained about vaulting: if you don’t really go for the trick and don’t get a lot of height, you won’t have room to do the flip and you will break your neck. So one way to fail is to not really go for the hard stuff, to stay easy and mundane. Another way is to really try, go way out on a limb and then have it break. Oops! But you gain more experience and next time you will stop just before it breaks. Failures can seem a waste of time, but they seldom are. The important thing is to not get hurt or hurt anyone else.
As I said I think it is opportunities, chance encounters. I was 12 and my father, an archeologist, took the whole family to Europe and the Middle East for a year. I got to see the Parthenon, Mycenae, Damascus, Jerusalem, Rome, Florence and Paris for 6 months. I came back compelled to try [and emulate] what I had seen in all those places. All of those creations had been done by people, and in my 12 year old head I was a person too, so why not me. I came back with a huge portfolio of drawings and paintings. I was able to go to a high school with 4 art teachers and an art department. I was able to schedule art classes every day. By the time I graduated from high school I had done many life-size figures in clay, made many kilns, thrown pottery, painted and drew regularly. I was not allowed to go to art school, so I left home and never stopped creating. I have supported myself since age 18 by my art. I just love it so much and with endless its variety.
My first love was for Michelangelo, Bernini, then Rodin and Camille Claudel. Later I came to love Giacometti both for his paintings and sculptures. I saw a book on Vigeland Park outside Oslo, in Norway, and that blew my mind. But the artists that had the most influence over me were three teachers. The first when I was 12, Lillian Sargent, took me out in Paris and sat me on the sidewalks and painted with me, allowed me to say I was an artist. Ms. Ingrid Peterson in High school was Danish-born and trained. She was hard on me and insisted I do things over and over again. She walked around with a knife and would lop off parts of the [sculpture] body that she though I could do better. And Finally my master, Tom Blodgett, who turned my head around and offered me a new approach to creativity. It was way more scary and dangerous, but the results were off the charts. I love painting as much as sculpture and there are tons of great painters and draftsmen out there. Rembrandt, Turner, most the impressionists, Corot, and Sargent. I see what these artists have done and I want their experience. I want to be able to make those kinds of works that are so moving and powerful. There just isn’t enough time to do it all. I love to etch and both Rembrandt and Whistler did amazing etchings. This young artist Jeremy Lipking is outstanding. I want it all; I want to do it all! Our way of thinking is to create nonstop. We might not make it to tomorrow, so full steam ahead today. When sculptures, paintings, etchings are all pouring out of the studio, making a living will not be an issue.
Oh my, I left out N. C. Wyeth. How could I have forgotten my love of him! I think exposure to lots of work is a good thing. Studying with Tom [Blodgett] changed my life. What blew my mind with Tom was that he questioned the whole approach we have to ideas. Ideas that come from your awake, conscious mind, you could throw out as trite and superficial. He looked for the ideas that came from the creative process. He believed as do I that our brains are heavily influenced by things we have seen or done. To escape from those influences and get to some other purer approach was what he sought to teach. You don’t need anyone with you at the moment of creation. I enjoy sharing it because I think people need to see it happen to believe. Start without an idea. Go deep into the process; days or weeks of applying paint or removing stone. Waiting for inspiration to flood your mind. The ideas that come from the process is so exciting that it gives you a rocket boost of creative power. Composition is King. Layout is everything. So those first weeks can just be setting the stage for creativity. Lights and darks are established, tensions are put into the composition before you know what the image is. Tension builds and a sense of desperation enters.
As images start to appear one has choices and it can happen that an idea comes that just sweeps you off your feet. Unfortunately, I alone witness most of my most creative moments. I wish more people could see how magically it works. From what before seemed like nothing springs something nearly finished. The brain will suddenly arrange the available material or color and an image appears much the way we see things in clouds. It is a process of recognition—not imposing your thought on the situation—but receiving, from a much more vast pool of subconscious information. Out of this pool comes the really great ideas that reach a broader population and talk to our humanity. Our own ideas are way too ego-driven to trust. Imagine the first burst of energy to begin, and this tension grows and then a dam breaks and ideas flood in. Suddenly you see your way and another boost of energy is felt that drives you clear to the end. You sit there and just cannot believe the amazing roller coaster ride you’ve been on. Then you get up and do it again, from the beginning; no ideas! I even think the early cave paintings used natural formations to inspire their work. Da Vinci spoke of throwing a bucket of paint at a wall and see what comes out. I think it is a part of our humanness and is a common experience as you say, so this ability is universal and open to us all. Drawing regularly helps to train the eye and makes pulling out the image easier. That is why it is so important. So I say draw all the time, look and remember, but when you create, put it all to the side as it does not enter into the creative process until midway through. I do not work out my images ahead of time. I see art as lots of practice and then doing it. This makes the doing an intense experience and heightens your awareness. We all dream at night and see tons of images, so seeing images is not really anyone's problem. It is how to get those images out that we are looking for. Randomness and chaos is the answer. The world around us is random; as we are part of that world we also have randomness in us. So my random strokes of color or removal of stone sets the stage for the create act. Yes, it does take courage to begin work with no goal, and the desperation builds the longer you carry on with this “insane” activity. When the tension has built to the right point the magic happens and images appear. Those images will not be anything like what you have seen before and yet you will recognize them.
There are several things that I like about carving stone. First is that there is no second step, like firing a piece in clay or casting it in metal. When you are done you are done. Your efforts stand a chance of surviving a few centuries if not more, so one stands a chance of becoming known, at least after passing. I know I will have left over 400 pieces on this earth to bring joy and pleasure to many people for a long time. There are fewer of us stone carvers, and figurative carvers are in an even smaller circle, so competition is less. There are so many painters out there, and good ones at that! Plus, for me, I like hammers and physically using my body. It is also a romantic thing. The tools have changed some but not enough to really alter the challenge of pulling an image out of stone. That said, for centuries the act of carving was left to artisans. Copying techniques have been around since the Greeks. The work was too much for one guy so they came up with systems to copy from a model. Those systems work perfectly, but render the carving process down to a technical exercise. That is why I have never bothered to learn them or practice them. Direct figure carving is very rare. It is a niche in which I have only a few fellow artists, who are mostly friends, to compete with. I have been able to make a living because I have a product that few others have. In bronze they make replicas. In marble they make replicas as well, copies of the David, once a year in Pietrasanta [Italy]. But there will be no replicas of my work. Each piece is unique and unable to copy as there are natural surfaces of stone, breaks and random tool marks that make the copy process impossible. When my clients purchase a piece they know they have the only one of its kind that will ever be on this earth. A sculpture is never finished, just abandoned. I find the point at which I abandon them is getting sooner rather than later. I once asked a fabulous Italian artisan if I could leave a sculpture in its early phase of rough-out, when all the movements were there but no detail. “Yes, it is beautiful,“ he agreed. “But you are too young to leave it that way, so you must finish it.” I have less and less patience for the finishing work as it just takes so long. Still, I push it as far as my interest will go. Or I get the piece so far and say, if anyone shows interest I will finish it, but for now I want to try something new.
I often feel and refer to the birthing process as a way to describe creating. I have no problems sending my stone children out into the world. The first owner is just that, the first in a long line of people that will care for the piece.
In the quarry I select blocks of quality but also what they call “Informe,” or stone without cuts, if possible. They are just raw hunks of stone off the mountain. This insures that they are unique pieces that can never be found again, much the way every snow-flake is unique. All the outside surfaces are natural and already have a patina of eons. But for the purpose of this exercise we can also pretend it is a cut cube of the purest stone. Once I get the block off the mountain and it is standing in my studio I remove 30% of the weight of the block. Starting with a 9 ton block, I must remove 3 tons. I can remove a ton a day easy, so within the first few days I will have the block down to 6 tons. This stone would be removed using a drill and splitting wedges with feathers and a diamond saw, point and hammer. Feather and Wedges are a quarrying technique that splits off massive pieces. I have learned to be fairly controlled and can take off 100-to-200-pound hunks at a time with a single hole. The first and largest pieces can be up to 800 pounds. While doing this I am thinking, "Composition is King." I am putting movement into the block and counter movements, accents, big strokes, medium strokes, and small strokes. It is like music; you have to have a variety of notes. So for about 3 days, no images, only abstract concepts of design and layout should influence the stone. Make it the best abstract sculpture ever carved. Do honor to Brancussi and Moore and others who fought to free us from what had become stale Neoclassicism. I tell my students: you can’t make a mistake if you don’t know what you are doing. When that block is singing it will start to happen. I come back from lunch or arrive early one morning and suddenly I see the first image. I try to get about seven images to play with, so I have multiple choices. The brain only utilizes the available material; all the stone I took off is gone. The image usually does not present itself to me unless the material is there to carve. Often I will see between 50-80 percent of my image. I then start where I see things the clearest and begin to carve only profiles. Profiles are lines learned in drawing. That is why drawing is so tied to sculpture. A line is either right or wrong. If it needs changing, I decide on the new line and cut it until I see sky. I move 5 degrees and cut another profile. With every stroke the image becomes more evident; it becomes obvious what stone to remove. Any questions, I stop and check a resource: a human model or an old drawing that will help me through the problem. I keep moving. Turn, cut; turn, cut; turn cut. Like peeling an onion the layers come off and I approach the surface. All the fun stuff happens in the last 1/2 an inch. The last modeling is pure heaven. I know I have a great sculpture by that time and before long I can be carving details.
They say in marble carving that one needs courage, passion and patience. I am terrified at the beginning of each new project. It is not only the fear of failure but also the realization of all the work that is going to have to be done in order to arrive at an acceptable outcome. There are so many ways it can go wrong. It takes courage to begin despite the odds. One can hope that some of our past experiences will come in handy. I come to each project armed with my skills. Still, in order for the creativity to come, I must push myself into new territory, to stretch those skills, put them to the test. This is why we need to be passionate about the work. If not, it is too easy to give up. That passion drives us out to the studio when others are resting. The patience gives us endurance for the long haul.
What drives me is curiosity, what does it feel like to carve a masterpiece? It is more of that passion, which is one of those building blocks of art. I get up in the dark so I can have my coffee and be ready when it gets light enough to go outside and work. I am also driven because I feel I am learning more every day. I can see my progress. Failures happen all the time, which cause delays, but experience teaches. Two nights ago, I broke a sculpture twice and in the end had to give up. The next day I tried another similar idea; this time I didn’t break it. I went on to try an even more difficult piece also without breaking it. So again I feel I learned something.
Some of us are given more opportunities than others to play and are encouraged instead of told to "be realistic—you’ll never be able to make a living.” I have very little to say about talent. I believe it has more to do with life experiences, opportunities and the time to be curious, teachers who come at the right time in life and possessing a spirit that is open to beauty doesn’t hurt. I feel so blessed to be on my path, to have something I am passionate about and bring so much joy to others. The daily rewards of the artistic life keep us going. Not to say that financial concerns are not very real and can be extremely distracting. One more word about failure. My gym teacher explained about vaulting: if you don’t really go for the trick and don’t get a lot of height, you won’t have room to do the flip and you will break your neck. So one way to fail is to not really go for the hard stuff, to stay easy and mundane. Another way is to really try, go way out on a limb and then have it break. Oops! But you gain more experience and next time you will stop just before it breaks. Failures can seem a waste of time, but they seldom are. The important thing is to not get hurt or hurt anyone else.
As I said I think it is opportunities, chance encounters. I was 12 and my father, an archeologist, took the whole family to Europe and the Middle East for a year. I got to see the Parthenon, Mycenae, Damascus, Jerusalem, Rome, Florence and Paris for 6 months. I came back compelled to try [and emulate] what I had seen in all those places. All of those creations had been done by people, and in my 12 year old head I was a person too, so why not me. I came back with a huge portfolio of drawings and paintings. I was able to go to a high school with 4 art teachers and an art department. I was able to schedule art classes every day. By the time I graduated from high school I had done many life-size figures in clay, made many kilns, thrown pottery, painted and drew regularly. I was not allowed to go to art school, so I left home and never stopped creating. I have supported myself since age 18 by my art. I just love it so much and with endless its variety.
My first love was for Michelangelo, Bernini, then Rodin and Camille Claudel. Later I came to love Giacometti both for his paintings and sculptures. I saw a book on Vigeland Park outside Oslo, in Norway, and that blew my mind. But the artists that had the most influence over me were three teachers. The first when I was 12, Lillian Sargent, took me out in Paris and sat me on the sidewalks and painted with me, allowed me to say I was an artist. Ms. Ingrid Peterson in High school was Danish-born and trained. She was hard on me and insisted I do things over and over again. She walked around with a knife and would lop off parts of the [sculpture] body that she though I could do better. And Finally my master, Tom Blodgett, who turned my head around and offered me a new approach to creativity. It was way more scary and dangerous, but the results were off the charts. I love painting as much as sculpture and there are tons of great painters and draftsmen out there. Rembrandt, Turner, most the impressionists, Corot, and Sargent. I see what these artists have done and I want their experience. I want to be able to make those kinds of works that are so moving and powerful. There just isn’t enough time to do it all. I love to etch and both Rembrandt and Whistler did amazing etchings. This young artist Jeremy Lipking is outstanding. I want it all; I want to do it all! Our way of thinking is to create nonstop. We might not make it to tomorrow, so full steam ahead today. When sculptures, paintings, etchings are all pouring out of the studio, making a living will not be an issue.
Oh my, I left out N. C. Wyeth. How could I have forgotten my love of him! I think exposure to lots of work is a good thing. Studying with Tom [Blodgett] changed my life. What blew my mind with Tom was that he questioned the whole approach we have to ideas. Ideas that come from your awake, conscious mind, you could throw out as trite and superficial. He looked for the ideas that came from the creative process. He believed as do I that our brains are heavily influenced by things we have seen or done. To escape from those influences and get to some other purer approach was what he sought to teach. You don’t need anyone with you at the moment of creation. I enjoy sharing it because I think people need to see it happen to believe. Start without an idea. Go deep into the process; days or weeks of applying paint or removing stone. Waiting for inspiration to flood your mind. The ideas that come from the process is so exciting that it gives you a rocket boost of creative power. Composition is King. Layout is everything. So those first weeks can just be setting the stage for creativity. Lights and darks are established, tensions are put into the composition before you know what the image is. Tension builds and a sense of desperation enters.
As images start to appear one has choices and it can happen that an idea comes that just sweeps you off your feet. Unfortunately, I alone witness most of my most creative moments. I wish more people could see how magically it works. From what before seemed like nothing springs something nearly finished. The brain will suddenly arrange the available material or color and an image appears much the way we see things in clouds. It is a process of recognition—not imposing your thought on the situation—but receiving, from a much more vast pool of subconscious information. Out of this pool comes the really great ideas that reach a broader population and talk to our humanity. Our own ideas are way too ego-driven to trust. Imagine the first burst of energy to begin, and this tension grows and then a dam breaks and ideas flood in. Suddenly you see your way and another boost of energy is felt that drives you clear to the end. You sit there and just cannot believe the amazing roller coaster ride you’ve been on. Then you get up and do it again, from the beginning; no ideas! I even think the early cave paintings used natural formations to inspire their work. Da Vinci spoke of throwing a bucket of paint at a wall and see what comes out. I think it is a part of our humanness and is a common experience as you say, so this ability is universal and open to us all. Drawing regularly helps to train the eye and makes pulling out the image easier. That is why it is so important. So I say draw all the time, look and remember, but when you create, put it all to the side as it does not enter into the creative process until midway through. I do not work out my images ahead of time. I see art as lots of practice and then doing it. This makes the doing an intense experience and heightens your awareness. We all dream at night and see tons of images, so seeing images is not really anyone's problem. It is how to get those images out that we are looking for. Randomness and chaos is the answer. The world around us is random; as we are part of that world we also have randomness in us. So my random strokes of color or removal of stone sets the stage for the create act. Yes, it does take courage to begin work with no goal, and the desperation builds the longer you carry on with this “insane” activity. When the tension has built to the right point the magic happens and images appear. Those images will not be anything like what you have seen before and yet you will recognize them.
There are several things that I like about carving stone. First is that there is no second step, like firing a piece in clay or casting it in metal. When you are done you are done. Your efforts stand a chance of surviving a few centuries if not more, so one stands a chance of becoming known, at least after passing. I know I will have left over 400 pieces on this earth to bring joy and pleasure to many people for a long time. There are fewer of us stone carvers, and figurative carvers are in an even smaller circle, so competition is less. There are so many painters out there, and good ones at that! Plus, for me, I like hammers and physically using my body. It is also a romantic thing. The tools have changed some but not enough to really alter the challenge of pulling an image out of stone. That said, for centuries the act of carving was left to artisans. Copying techniques have been around since the Greeks. The work was too much for one guy so they came up with systems to copy from a model. Those systems work perfectly, but render the carving process down to a technical exercise. That is why I have never bothered to learn them or practice them. Direct figure carving is very rare. It is a niche in which I have only a few fellow artists, who are mostly friends, to compete with. I have been able to make a living because I have a product that few others have. In bronze they make replicas. In marble they make replicas as well, copies of the David, once a year in Pietrasanta [Italy]. But there will be no replicas of my work. Each piece is unique and unable to copy as there are natural surfaces of stone, breaks and random tool marks that make the copy process impossible. When my clients purchase a piece they know they have the only one of its kind that will ever be on this earth. A sculpture is never finished, just abandoned. I find the point at which I abandon them is getting sooner rather than later. I once asked a fabulous Italian artisan if I could leave a sculpture in its early phase of rough-out, when all the movements were there but no detail. “Yes, it is beautiful,“ he agreed. “But you are too young to leave it that way, so you must finish it.” I have less and less patience for the finishing work as it just takes so long. Still, I push it as far as my interest will go. Or I get the piece so far and say, if anyone shows interest I will finish it, but for now I want to try something new.
I often feel and refer to the birthing process as a way to describe creating. I have no problems sending my stone children out into the world. The first owner is just that, the first in a long line of people that will care for the piece.