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Originally from Zurich, Maja was always keen to leave Switzerland and with an Italian grandmother perhaps Italy was always going to be her destination. She moved to Italy in 1991.

She speaks to us about how her approach to work has changed. When she was young she liked seeing the impression her hands made on the work, while now she seeks smoothness and perfection.

We meet Maja at her home - Artists Hill - an old farmhouse, surrounded by olive groves and a huge vegetable garden, which she has renovated into a home, studios, and a part that she rents out.

First Maja shows us the room where she draws, and then we move over to her new modelling studio, opposite the house.

In the middle of this room, towering above her, is a spiral column. It’s a plastercast - soon to be realised in acrylic resin and earth.

Maja tells us about a bas relief project in 16 panels called dressing. The question she originally posed was, “Can we change religion like clothes or is religion something inherent to us, you know, is it like part of us?"

One of Maja’s first pieces was Extension of Ego and now it takes pride of place in her studio. Maja still loves it and it represents the theme she still develops of externalising human traits in her work.

Labrynth is another of Maja’s pieces that follows the theme of a body’s outside reflecting what is inside.

majathommen.ch

instagram.com/thommenmaja

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Ursula è nata a Seravezza e vive e lavora ancora nella zona di Pietrasanta e ha anche trascorso un periodo di apprendimento delle tecniche speciali di mosaico di Ravenna e Spilimbergo.

Facciamo un giro nel suo studio e tra le sue numerose scatole di tessere.

Quando le chiediamo quanto sia importante la luce nella composizione di un mosaico, Ursula ci spiega che una delle prime cose che fa quando accetta un incarico è vedere dove verrà collocato il mosaico.

Le sue commissioni la portano in tutto il mondo e, quando l'abbiamo incontrata, era appena tornata da un lavoro a Filadelfia, negli Stati Uniti.

Ursula ci racconta della sua formazione e di alcuni dei progetti speciali a cui ha lavorato, compreso il primo, per una sinagoga.

Vedere i suoi lavori su Facebook “mosaici Ursula Corsi”

facebook.com/mosaiciursulacorsi

instagram.com/mosaiciursulacorsi

English translation
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Ursula was born in Seravezza and still lives and works in the Pietrasanta area and also spent a period learning the special mosaic techniques of Ravenna and Spilimbergo.

However, her commissions take her all over the world and when we met her, she had just returned from a job in Philadelphia, USA.

Ursula tells us about her education and some of the special projects she has worked on, including her first one, for a synagogue.

Let's take a tour of his studio and his many boxes of tiles.

When we ask her how important light is in the composition of a mosaic, Ursula explains that one of the first things she does when she accepts a commission is to see where the mosaic will be placed.

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Dutch artist Anne-Claire trained and worked as a lawyer until she followed her heart to become an artist. She moved to Pietrasanta, where she lived, and worked, for 15 years. Now she divides her time between the Hague and Pietrasanta.

After the pandemic she was looking for a way to capture peoples’ thoughts and emotions in order to make a three-dimensional sculpture of them in clay.

Having discovered that a traditional scanner was unable to grab the emotion she saw in a split second, Anne-Claire was happy to meet Claudio Giustiniani of ArtaxLab in Pietrasanta, who showed her how he used 30 Nikon cameras in conjunction with a 3-D printer. Working with Claudio she could get what she wanted and began her project to capture the emotions around the experience of COVID-19 called My Collection of Souls.

To create her My Collection of Souls Anne-Claire talked to the person about COVID-19 and, at the exact moment she saw their strongest expression, she pressed the button on the cameras. Claudio and she discuss in this episode how they created the work - from taking the photograph through to the finished collection.

Another collaboration Anne-Claire made was with photographer Gail Skoff.

Gail came to this part of Italy in 2017 to photograph the quarries of Carrara but soon became fascinated by the artists working in marble. When she met Anne-Claire they instantly clicked, and embarked on a collaboration with Gail’s photographic collage technique. Gail likes to enter the world of the artist and elaborate on their process, creating more of an impression of the artist's work rather than its ultimate reality.

Anne-Claire tells us how it was working with Gail and how happy she was to have Icarus flying.

From her childhood, Anne-Claire was inspired by how Michelangelo expressed such soft emotions in hard marble. Below is a piece in tribute to him. Anne-Claire thought David’s victory over Goliath was an excellent metaphor for our battle and the optimism needed to succeed during COVID-19.

anneclaire.nl

instagram.com/anneclairevandenelshout

ArtAxlab aims to build a bridge between the artisan world and digital technologies

artaxlab.com

instagram.com/artaxlab

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A sculptor and painter born in Damascus, Usama tells of the impact of being brought up in Syria and of continuously dealing with people from different religions with diverse ways of looking at things. 

Usama’s studio space, and home, is tucked away in the shadow of the statuario marble quarries. Usama bought the space in this historic marble area because he felt an urgency to build a stone amphitheatre there. Initially he dismissed the land because he feared flooding. But he worked non-stop his first winter to build his theatre. 

He tells us about his childhood and how it informed the person he’s become. His uncles are both sculptors and their books on marble, in his grandmother’s library, inspired him from a young age. First he studied art in Damascus, where he carved in wood, and then he came to Carrara to study sculpting in marble. 

Usama talks about his relationship with nature and his love of plants. He grew up in Syria with a family garden of fruit and vegetables, and always loved working in nature. He has planted many trees and plants in his Carrara home.

Many of Usama’s pieces are inspired by immigration There’s a wall of marble blocks sculpted with luggage handles, straps and zips. He tells how immigrants who used to carry lots of luggage now find their luggage has become much smaller, sometimes even just a mobile phone.

Usama created a series of sculptures of women depicting the life of women in the Middle East and their freedom to travel around. His sculptures explore how women have sometimes been transformed by religion into more of an icon than a person, and how this can also become a prison. However, they often find virtual freedom through the internet.

This piece is a woman on one side and on the other side a horse, her hair represents an extension of her thoughts.

Usama loves teaching and sharing his skills whilst allowing his students to develop their own personalities in their work.

alnassar.it

instagram.com/alnassarsculpture

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Originally from Oregon, John moved around America a lot as a child. Although he was not formally schooled as an artist, he received his education at a young age while travelling with his family through Europe and the Middle East. There he took in many of the great works of antiquity.

John came to sculpture in his thirties from a background in painting, and very quickly began carving monumental pieces which he was able to sell. It was at this time that he experienced a revelation when he began to imagine how stone carvers worked in the past.

Although this technique is much less practised nowadays, he believes that for thousands of years sculptors worked without eye protection. They discovered what John refers to as profile carving. John describes himself as a direct, flexible, profile carver.

The first piece John mentions is a big reclining figure which earned John enough money to allow him to come back to Pietrasanta and work. Recently the owner of that piece died and John was able to buy it back in an auction.

John also tells of the gravestone he carved which is in the cemetery of Querceta, near Pietrasanta which is a Pieta of 5 life-size figures.

Another piece, a pair of lovers, John carved from a special piece of marble he had kept for 16 years. As he was carving the embrace he had a moving experience as he felt them pushing themselves into each other, as though they couldn’t get close enough.

Now John divides his time between the Redwood forests of California and Pietrasanta - drawing inspiration from the world around.

He acknowledges a great debt to the cavatore, the quarrymen. Without quarrymen, artists don’t have the material to work with.

johnfishersculpture.com

instagram.com/giovannipescatore51

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Sandy first came to Italy to be with her partner, the sculptor John Fisher, and enjoyed the influences of the Italian Renaissance, and the detailed work of the Baroque.

From observing the sculptors she learned about shadow and light, negative shape and profile lines. However, she was offered a three month artist residency in a paper making village in Japan where she discovered an economy of stroke and a muted palette which inspired her to develop her work with paper.

Gail and I met Sandy at Pescarella studios, in Vallechia, on the road from Pietrasanta towards Carrara. As we entered the large studio space, Sandy was calmly taping collages onto the wall, for a pop-up exhibition she was staging.

Her beautiful collages feature fruits, wine bottles and inviting cups of cappuccino - with froth you can almost taste. There’s a three dimensional effect on wooden spoons that she has created with papers of different shades.

On another work a tower of coffee cups leans so precariously I want to reach out and save them.

Beside Sandy there’s a table heaped with fine, plain and patterned, papers carefully arranged by colour. She shows us some samples of the paper and talks about how they are made and tells us about her techniques.

Sandy speaks about an ongoing series of womens’ portraits called Women in the World. In this project she aims to honour and recognise struggles and successes of notable women who have made a special contribution to the world. This life-long series includes visual artists, actors, musicians, scientists and political activists.

On her birthday Sandy does a collage self-portrait to reflect on the year behind and the one ahead. She talks about her childhood and the words of wisdom she took from her father who escaped Germany in WW2 and came to America.

sandyoppenheimercollage.com

instagram.com/sandyoppenheimer

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On 15th April, 2019 a catastrophic fire broke out in Notre Dame Cathedral. Parisians watched in horror as the spire fell and most of the roof was destroyed. In the aftermath it became clear that a large area was contaminated with toxic dust and lead.

The iconic building, which has dominated the Île de la Cité island in Paris since the Middle Ages, is a national symbol not only for the French but for people all over the world. 

President Macron pledged to build back the cathedral as it was before, and as the planned reopening in December 2024 looms, a huge office structure has mushroomed around it and 500 workers are on site daily as the team race to rebuild it.

The eyes of the world are watching, but Materially Speaking has a story for our ears - the story of its sound.

As a sound specialist himself, Mike Axinn was fascinated when he discovered there is a group exploring the restoration of the acoustics at Notre Dame. He approached Brian F.G. Katz and David Poirier-Quinot at the Sorbonne, and their colleague, sound archeologist Mylène Pardoen, who is co-coordinator with Brian of the scientific acoustics team assisting the reconstruction of Notre Dame, and soon we were off to Paris to hear their stories. We first met Brian and David at a restaurant and then visited their simulator inside the Sorbonne to discover more.

Notre Dame has a special role in western European music’s history and is generally thought of as the cradle of polyphony. Sarah was attracted to this angle as her father, Christopher Monk, was part of the Early Music movement which restored the use of the Renaissance cornett, a woodwind instrument well known in Monteverdi’s music. He also made and played serpents, long snake-shaped instruments that had a central role in music that was performed in Notre Dame many centuries ago. So she approached Volny Hostiou, one of France’s leading serpent players, and we were delighted when he and singer Thomas Van Essen agreed to join us in Paris for some experiments with Brian and David.

We then jumped on a train to Lyon to meet with Mylène Pardoen and learn more about her work as one of the world’s foremost sound archaeologists, tasked with recording the sounds made by stone masons and other artisans in their work, and re-imagining the church’s soundscape at various points in its history.

A key person driving the physical restoration is Pascal Prunet, Chief architect of historic monuments in France and part of the team in charge of restoring Notre-Dame. Prunet explains that their work in restoring the church has revealed many secrets about its construction and the work done by artisans. We were fortunate to hear how his team was able to discover things they never would have learned had it not been for the fire.

As we obviously could not go inside Notre-Dame, Volny and Thomas then kindly arranged for us to hear them play in the Abbey of Rouen, built on a similar scale to nearby Rouen Cathedral, the abbey is famous for both its architecture and its large, unaltered Cavaillé-Coll organ. Here they talked to us about the serpent and their group Les Meslanges, showed us a serpent fresco on the ceiling of the Abbey and played in three different locations.

Finally Mike takes us back to Brian and David’s simulator to compare and contrast the sound of the musicians live in the Abbey of Rouen, and their simulated version of how the music would sound at different historical periods of Notre-Dame’s history.

Thanks also to Frédéric Ménissier who made a great video recording of our visit to the Abbaye of Rouen. You will be able to watch the result on YouTube @materiallyspeakingpodcast nearer the scheduled reopening of Notre Dame, in December 2024.

Thanks and links

We are very grateful to Brian, David, Mylène, Pascal, Volny and Thomas for giving so generously of their time and sharing their expertise and passion. You can learn more about their projects in the following links.

Brian F.G. Katz & David Poirier-Quinot
Brian Katz, originally from the U.S., is an acoustics specialist and leads the Sound Spaces research team. David Poirier-Quinot works with Brian and is a researcher, presently focused on sound spatialisation, perception, and room acoustics simulation for virtual and augmented realities.

Beginning mid April 2024, The Past Has Ears project is launching Whispers of Notre Dame, ‘Ekko of Notre-Dame de Paris’, an immersive audio guide that transports listeners through time and space to the heart of Paris's most treasured landmark. Free on Google Play, Android and iOS. It can be listened to anywhere, but is best with GPS onsite at Notre Dame.

ndwhispers.pasthasears.eu

Mylène Pardoen
Musicologist and soundscape archaeologist Mylène records and recreates the sounds of the past. She is a scientific expert for the restoration of Notre-Dame - Co-coordinator of the Acoustics group. She is also designer, coordinator and manager of the Bretez and ESPHAISTOSS projects.

Pascal Prunet
Chief architect of Historic Monuments responsible for the restoration of Notre-Dame de Paris is noted for his work in the restoration of the Cathedrals of Paris, Nantes, Limoges, Nîmes, Arras and Cambrai, as well as the Opéra Garnier in Paris , Le Corbusier 's Villa Savoye and the Citadel of Lille. 

prunet-architecture.com

Volny Hostiou & Thomas Van Essen
Musicians specialising in performing compositions that were written for, and often performed for the first time in, Notre-Dame.

Volny teaches tuba and serpent at the Rouen Conservatoire and creates projects in collaboration with the Musée de la Musique de Paris.

Thomas is a musicologist, flautist and singer, dedicated to early music and founded Les Meslanges, one of the early music ensembles Volny plays in.

Les Meslanges is supported by the French Ministry of Culture, the Regional Arts Council of Normandy, the Normandy Regional Government and the Rouen City Council. The ensemble is a member of FEVIS – the Federation of Specialised Vocal and Instrumental Ensembles.

Credits

Producer: Sarah Monk

Producer/Editor: Mike Axinn

Music: courtesy of Les Meslanges - Thomas van Essen & Volny Hostiou

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The flags are out, the bunting too, and the red and white mascot Burlamacco is everywhere as Viareggio eagerly awaits the start of Carnival. The trees are heavy with oranges, the sweet fried dough, chiacchiere, are in the pastry shops - there’s excitement in the air!

Dating back to 1873, Viareggio’s Carnival attracts thousands of visitors each year to watch the enormous, intricate papier-mâché sculptures dance their way along the seaside promenade.

From September through March the Citta del Carnevale - a circular complex with 16 hangars - is a hub of energy for the artisan community using boat-making skills from Viareggio, and artistic creativity from Pietrasanta. Last year we learnt how they use newspaper, along with flour and water paste, to create papier-mâché floats.

But between the audience watching and the artists creating, there’s another community: hundreds of volunteers or 'figurants' who turn up to rehearse, rain or shine, each weekend, to form the colourful dancing troupes in front of the floats.

So Mike and I are here to revisit the LeBigre family on the 20th anniversary of their La Compagnia del Carnevale to learn why their 200 volunteers return each year, and what impact one creative project can have on the wider community.

For this episode we are also proud to collaborate with Celia & Enzo of Piazza Talk Lucca - a popular YouTube channel sharing how life is in Lucca, and in the Tuscan hills. Celia, a book restorer, and Enzo, a sea captain dived right in to volunteer behind the scenes with the Le Bigre family creating papier-mâché items for the float.

Check out the videos they made of their behind the scenes experience volunteering with the Le Bigre family on their YouTube channel.

Links

Carnival parades run through the end of February 2024. You can also visit the Cittadella museum during the rest of the year.

• Viareggio carnival info & tickets
• instagram.com/compagnia_del_carnevale

Celia & Enzo 

• Youtube: Piazza Talk Lucca 
• instagram.com/piazzatalklucca
• facebook.com/piazzatalklucca

Le Bigre

• viareggio.ilcarnevale.com
• Benjamin Le Bigre’s theatre group in Paris
• instagram.com/elodielebigre_babskin
• instagram.com/benleb

Credits

Producer: Sarah Monk

Producer/Editor: Mike Axinn

Music : courtesy of Audio Network

• Gypsy World, Haris Custovic

Special thanks to Linda Nari for sharing her vibrant photos

• Carnevale 2024 Facebook post
• instagram.com/lindajezsek

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Gabriele talks to us about his upbringing in Genoa, his self-taught artistic training, his love for the history of art, and for photography.

He explains the process of creating pebble mosaics, including the selection of stones and the use of lime mortar. He also discusses the importance of preserving the skills and techniques of mosaic making and the impact of climate change on the availability of materials.

We met Gabriele in a city park called Campo Pisano – where Genoa once beat Pisa at the battle of Meloria, and confined more than 9,000 prisoners. Here he is restoring a memorial mosaic which was first made by Gabriele’s teacher Armando Porta. Further info and images on Wikipedia.

For many centuries Genoa wielded enormous power as a maritime republic and was considered one of the wealthiest cities in the world. On our way to Gabriele’s studio he showed us the narrow streets and wonderful architecture, with layers of history.

Liguria, is a region of northern Italy; a narrow strip bordered by sea on one side and densely wooded mountains on the other. The air here smells of salt from the sea, minerals from the rocks, and pine from the hills. Its traditional crafts are mostly inspired by materials from the sea and forests.

Gabriele emphasises the need to pass on the craft to future generations. Gabriele's work is driven by his deep connection to nature and a desire to create beautiful and sustainable art.

mosaicidiciottoli.it

facebook.com/mosaicidiciottoli

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We settle down to chat outside Robin Bell’s home at a sheltered table with a spectacular view of the sea, from Pisa to La Spezia, and the never ending horizon. An exterior storage space against a yellow wall reveals shelves laden with maquettes and sculptures in various stages of completion.

Robin discusses his move from working with marble to bronze and his focus on creating larger sculptures. He shares stories about some of his notable commissions, including sculptures of Winston Churchill, Ulysses and the hockey star and Canadian politician, Ken Dryden.

Robin talks about his Irish heritage and how he loves telling stories through his sculptures. He also describes his working process and how he immerses himself in the characters he sculpts. He recounts the preparations he took to sculpt a Canadian cutting horse called Peppy San, which took three years to make. 

Coming from a military family involved Robin in much travelling and he acknowledges the influence his grandfather’s pioneering spirit had on him. He reflects on how attached he is to the view of the horizon over the sea from his house near Pietrasanta. Nowadays Robin creates a drawing daily, which he posts on social media.

instagram.com/bellrobinch

Robin Bell on Facebook