DAY ONE
As you leave the city of Carrara, Italy and go up the mountain toward Torano the first marble quarry that you see is a large cave. It is called "Cava Vecchia", Old Quarry, and has been yielding an extraordinary white statuario marble since the first century Romans opened it.
The piece that I am beginning to carve came from Carrara to Boston, to Carver, Massachusetts, to Miami, and finally to Gloucester, Massachusetts. I know it well by now and think that I know what it contains. It is more than two feet wide and just less than two feet high, but only six inches deep. I will carve a deep relief in the marble based on the clay model shown here. It is a Renaissance approach in that the sculpture will have one principle view.
The general idea for this piece comes from my marble Pieta.
(see Pieta) For some time I have wanted to carve
the heads alone on a larger scale. This new block changes the design somewhat.
I am a direct carver, (more about this later) and the important dynamic is the interaction between me and the block. On day one the clay model helps me to determine where to begin. It gives me the attitudes and tilts of the heads and their relationship to each other.
I am not disappointed in the quality or color of the marble.
day one two three four five week one
sixteen seventeen eighteen twenty
twenty-four twenty-five twenty-six twenty-seven twenty-nine
thirty-seven (hole in the marble)
forty fifty-three fifty-eight fifty-nine sixty-one
An Overview-Small photos of some days