How I work. A sneak peek into my studio

You may ask yourself “How did it happen that a sculptor created an entire art show with sculptures and…poems.

Well, I hadn´t done this before. But to explain it I need to tell you a little how I work.

See, when I create sculptures I have different approaches.

When I have a commission it is fairly clear.

One of my clients wants to have something. We talk about it in detail to make sure I (and they) have really understood, what they want. I make it (Okay it is a little more challenging as I make it sound here, but you get the idea).

When I do “free” sculptures, things are different.

Often I see a piece of stone and have an idea what to do with it.

Sometimes it works out fine and I get into the working flow, that makes me finish the sculpture in one rush (The rush can last several days until the sculpture is finished. Yet basically I know always what I do and how to proceed.).

But often I recognise after a while that things don´t work out the way I thought.

In consequence I put the half finished piece aside and let it collect dust in my studio (And I have lots of dust in there:-)

Preparing the art show for the Villa Aganoor Pompilj where I had to create sculptures for an entire garden some of these pieces suddenly fitted into the concept like pieces of a puzzle falling into place.

Of course I had to finish them mostly differently than the way I had intended to do in the beginning. But now I got into the work flow.

When I work on a sculpture I give it a name, a work title if you want to call it this way.

Of course these work titles refer to something I see in the stone.

To give you an example.

For the “Wings of Sunset” the name was very clear from the beginning. Later I changed the title of the poem to “wings” but the original title is still in the poem.

As a matter of fact from the very moment the sculpture has a title it creates an image in the brain of the viewer. Happened also to me.

Working on the sculpture I tried to get always closer to that image.

Consequently the image got stronger, I started to see things more in detail, just like a little movie. The glaring sunlight, the golden reflections on the waves, the dark indigo grey water when the sun has settled behind the horizon…And then I started to describe it, trying to evoke in few words the image in my brain.

It was similar with the “Lost poems”. I had a peace of marble that resembled antique scrolls (Just in my phantasy, somebody else might have seen something completely different)

While I worked on them my brain was all about, “What could have happened to them? What could happen to them in future? Which stories can they tell us”.

And so it went on. I did get into a flow not only of chiseling, cutting, polishing stone but also doing the same to the words and images in my brain.

Vice versa the sudden focus on the words, the poems made me look at the stones differently, made me see things I hadn´t perceived before, thus changing also the images.

There is one difference between words and stones. Once you have carved away something from the stone it is gone. Words you can ad or take away every way you want.

Though while creating my poems I found that it was usually better to “carve” away some more words.