Materially Speaking

See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Born in Soissons, France, Emmanuel went to trade school at the age of 16 to learn how to renovate historical monuments by hand, specialising in granite. He spent some years restoring churches, cathedrals and monuments all over France until he felt the calling to create his own work as an artist. He says women and the female form are a constant s...

See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Lucy Dickens is an artist and illustrator, whose works exudes humour. Close friends since the age of three, Lucy and Sarah ramble and percolate over Lucy’s upcoming show. As a great, great granddaughter of writer Charles Dickens, writing plays an important part in Lucy’s life. Her paintings often have a narrative quality, leaving you wondering w...

See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com   Welcome back to a second series of Materially Speaking – where artists and artisans tell us their stories through the materials they choose.  In these snapshot stories, they tell us about their journey to become an artist, and the inspirations for their work. Along the way, they explain why they have chosen different materials to work with at...

Materially Speaking began with interviews from artists and artisans working near Pietrasanta in northern Italy, where generations of artists have come since Michelangelo first arrived over 500 years ago to source marble for his Pietà . We are taking a break for the summer but we have already started recording new interviews and look forward to sharing more artists’ stories later this year. We will...

See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Sollai Cartwright takes inspiration from everything around him creating both abstract and figurative work. Sollai talks about his favourite stone, Bianco P, and how it responds to chisels while holding its form. He speaks about the historical resources of the area around Pietrasanta and of the extensive range of historical tools available, espec...

See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Born into an artistic family in Australia, Jacob has been living in Italy, on and off, since he was two-years-old. He began his musical training very young and brings these sensibilities to his art. All the music in this episode was composed by Jacob . The Embrace series was inspired by a hug Jacob’s wife Jacqueline gave him. He explains that wh...

See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com   Christian Lange apprenticed as a chiseller in Freiburg, Germany, and started out as a stonemason restoring churches before coming to Pietrasanta to try his luck as an artist. Then he fell in love and his work took a slightly different direction. He decided to build his career as an artisan and now creates ornamental pieces and sacred art, as w...

See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com   Rita Meier learned the direct carving technique from artisans and the international community of artists in the studios around Pietrasanta. In this episode she talks about the grades of hardness of various stones and describes the process of carving. Inspired by organic shapes, Rita discusses her seed pods series which she sees as the carriers...

See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Californian artist Neal Barab says his work is variously influenced by Mexican pre-Colombian art, art from the Cyclades, African art, Japanese anime such as My Neighbor Totoro by Hayao Miyazaki and cartoons. Recently he’s been working on a series of ‘personaggi’, or characters – human and animal – carved from multicoloured stones, some painted....

See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com When Almuth Tebbenhoff came to London in the late 1960s she started from scratch: learning a new language, finding a job and studying to be a potter. A decade later, a lucky meeting with Eduardo Paolozzi gave her the chance to study at the Royal College of Art where drawing classes, lectures and conversations with other artists led her from the...

See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com After what he describes as a ‘very free’ art education, Australian-born Michael Francis Cartwright first came to Carrara in Italy 35 years ago with his wife Shona Nunan . Michael says ‘the main thing in my life is about creating something the whole time’ and discusses the many mediums he employs. Michael likes drawing, painting, printmaking, wor...

See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com   Liverpudlian Martin Foot always loved learning and since childhood dreamt of carving in stone. At the age of 13 he worked weekends for his uncle, a stone mason. At 19 he took a one-way ticket to Australia to try his luck and found himself carving in the company of Italians, who spoke of home. This sowed the seeds in Martin’s mind of some day w...

See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Shona Nunan and her husband, Michael Francis Cartwright, left Australia for Italy to tell the world, and themselves, that they were committed to being artists. They arrived in Carrara, near the white marble mountains 35 years ago, without even enough money to eat the workers’ lunches. She tells her story, from peering longingly into the bronze f...

See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Eilis O’Connell studied at art school in Cork, Ireland in the early 1970s. She was fascinated by making something small and then realising it big. Here she shares with us the amazing range of the materials she’s worked with and her new-found admiration for marble. Eilis says ‘I just love experimenting, as a natural thing. I’m a real messer. I li...

See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com   Canadian Douglas Robinson arrived in Pietrasanta in 1979 to learn from the artisans. He worked with Jørgen Sørensen and took to stone as his main medium for expression. He explains how the support network for the marble industry makes the area unique for artists to work in. He talks about the enormous range of stone available there and why the...

See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Eppe de Haan was born in Arnhem, Holland and studied art at the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague. Originally a painter, he came to Pietrasanta to try his hand at carving marble in 1995. There he started carving in a studio in Querceta before joining SEM Studios where the artisans shared their skills and experience. As a figurative painter his w...

See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Jim Hager, from California, has been carving marble in Pietrasanta, Northern Italy, for almost 30 years. He talks to us about his Sculpture for Homeless Project where he has captured the images and voices of the homeless in his home town of Oakland, California, and is creating an exhibition which will feature a cardboard “House of Cards” carved...

See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com   Stephan Hamel – a brand catalyst who divides his time between Milan, Vienna and Pietrasanta – tells the story of his Italian grandfather laying marble in palaces in India in the years both before and after Independence from the British.  Stephan reflects on the many ways in which marble has represented power over the generations, and observes...

See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com A woman artist often has to juggle family matters at the same time as fulfilling her own creative dreams. The seeds for Turid finding her way to Pietrasanta came from a chance meeting with the esteemed sculptor Helaine Blumenfeld when Turid was 18. However it took nearly 40 years for her to make her way to working in marble. Her story is one of...

See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Some materials are more resistant than others. They always say no. Armen tells us how he discovered a material that suits him. He speaks about marble, basalt and granite and the pros and cons of working in a close artistic community like the one near Pietrasanta. Giorgio Angeli Studio di Scultora D’Arte is where Armen Agop works and it was here...

See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Maria is a figurative artist working mainly with the female figure. She was born in Caracas, Venuzuela, but studied at the Pratt Institute in New York before coming to Pietrasanta in 1973 where she was one of the few women carving in marble. More recently, Maria helped fulfil the dream of a grieving mother who wanted a special memorial to her da...

See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Materially Speaking starts with stories from the community of artists working in stone near Pietrasanta,​ a town in northern Italy. Successive generations of artists have been coming here to source the marble available nearby and work with highly skilled local artisans. When Sarah saw how fast the lives of artists and artisans in this area were...