There is nothing entirely explicable about wanting to cut stone with a hammer and chisel. Especially not at the age of six when I started. Especially not ten hours a day. Stonecarving is hard rock and steel hammers and razor sharp chisels and exertion and sweat and fatigue. The gilded words of art are difficult to apply to the hard reality of stone.
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Stone carving is the oldest art at more than 60,000 years. I am the genetic and artistic descendant of all those before me who took up a stone and shaped it into something more interesting or more beautiful. Nothing more.
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Most sculptors don't carve stone. Most stone carvers don't carve eyes and ears and lips and fingers and toes. Some sculptors model clay, and re-do the nose until it's perfect. Michaelangelo once chipped the nose off a statue, rotated the face in the stone, and did it again.
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"Stone carving begins
with great violence against
the unwanted stone ..."
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He rotated the face the other way. When he chipped off the nose a third time he kicked the unfinished statue over and got another stone-- he could no longer release his vision from that rock. Michaelangelo left many sculptures "unfinished", yet I believe only the artist can decide when something is finished. The last stroke of the chisel, or the last smoothing stroke of a polishing stone brings a palpable sense of relief.
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Some sculptors leave no trace of the hammer, no mark of the chisel. This is not my way.
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Every stone carver makes mistakes, so stone and blood have always been companions. I can cut an automobile in two with my hammer and chisel, and a lot easier and with a lot fewer blows than I can carve your portrait in marble. A statue can easily require a month of work and a half-million blows of the hammer. Or much more.
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Stone carving begins with great violence against the unwanted stone, and ends with minutely delicate strokes of love. Opposites are the essence of stone carving. The life in the stone is simply the sculptor's own life given to it.
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I try with all my heart and strength to carve something that will endure. I try to carve something that will be treasured and protected in this era, and perhaps dug from the ruins in some distant age and treasured and protected once again. I try to not hit my hand with the hammer. After the long hours and the sweat and the failures a small beauty may emerge, and might with good fortune give pleasure in this age and the next and forever. |
My Philosophy of Stone Carving
