Marble, 20x9x9.5 inches.
After having taken some time off from marble carving to build my studio, I got back to it again. Trying to get the bulk of the rock removed to expose the figure in the stone block was a lot of work. At the end of a four hour session I felt whipped, like it must be to have just fought a round with Mohamed Ali. Hammering away took so much out of me that sometimes, I would need a nap afterwards. I would take off large masses only to find that when I thought I was close, I really had another inch or so to remove. Granted there are compressors and power tools I could have used to make the job easier, but I chose to do the entire project by hand as the great Sculptors from the past did. In fact, I even sharpened my chisels by hand as well.
My arms would be white with marble dust, little pieces like giant flakes of dandruff spotted my hair, and my shirt pocket would fill up like a miniature sand bag. Chunks of marble flew in every direction landing as much as 30 feet away. Sometimes a piece would rocket past my ears buzzing like a huge bumble bee does when it is uncomfortably close. No wonder eye protection was needed. In fact anyone within 30 feet of me, who was sharing the same space would need to be wearing eye protection. Which makes me wonder what Michelangelo used for goggles. If he had a pair why haven’t I seen them on Antique Road Show? In the cloud of Marble dust, sometimes, my Ungietto chisel would send out sparks as I struggled to give the rock a human shape.
As I relentlessly continued my work, and you have to be relentless or nuts to do this, I was certain my neighbors would soon go crazy and run me out of the neighborhood as they heard the sound of my Italian hammer hit my pointing chisel and echoing like thunder in my cavernous studio all morning long. Making full swings when using the pointing tool, I would stop now and then, to rest, to sharpen a tool or to rub the growing calluses on my sore hand. You could feel the heat on the tip of the pointing tool. I tried to establish a rhythm to work by, which wasn’t easy with classical music in the background. Once or twice I caught myself playing along with the symphony where I discovered that the sound of various tools changed their pitch and timber depending on where on the statue I was working or what tool I was using.
Marble, what a perfect material to make a human figure from. Did the Masters know that this crystallized rock is composed of calcium carbonate and that carbon compounds are the source of living organisms ? And did they know that calcium is the most abundant mineral in the human body? Like people, marble bruises and sometimes the figure will break in two if you hit a vein wrong. When carving, you are not just concerned with taking too much off or having it break on you after hours of work, but you are hopeful that the "Art Gods" will not leave you with nasty unbecoming veins on the surface when you reach the final plains of your figure.
At the end of a typical day of sculpting, I would look at the progress of that days work. It was hard trying to be objective and not just admire this beautiful stone which reminded me of the glittering Montana snow I remember as a kid. Before I would leave the studio, I would pick up a handful of the Marble dust I had swept from the floor and let it run between my fingers thinking, "this is what our bones are made of." "What a perfect material for a statue of the human figure". The Masters must have known.
T. J. Hogan