Materially Speaking

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Veronica was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where her mother taught drawing and painting. She learned alongside her mother’s students, discovered clay and soon started creating small animals and other subjects from nature. By the time she was a teenager it was clear that art was her path.

She came to Pietrasanta, along with childhood friend Flavia Robalo, to learn how to carve marble. They fell in love with the area and when Martin Foot introduced them to the ex-Cervietti studios they joined him there. Gradually they took over running the space and founded La Polveriera studios, known for its strong community of artists and holding special events.

La Polveriera was on the site of one of the last remaining historic studios in the centre of Pietrasanta where artisans had carved marble for more than 100 years. Franco Cervietti had his studio there for 40 years, and when he moved to bigger premises he left his large collection of historic gessos in the attic.

Recent members of La Polveriera whose stories have been featured on Materially Speaking including Jim Hager, Neil Ferber, Jake Cartwright and Rita Meier.

Veronica often creates centaurs, firstly because she loves animals and feels at one with them, secondly because she is especially fond of the centaur Chiron, who was the first educator in mythology. She often depicts children with the centaurs. Sometimes the centaurs carry the children, sometimes the children become the centaurs – gentle and sweet but also determined and independent. She is inspired by the child inside all of us, learning and moving forward, and growing with our intuition. Veronica’s most frequent themes are childhood, education and growth.

Veronica also creates paintings and sculptures of children and animals, particularly dogs.

Sadly La Polveriera studios closed at the end of 2020, but Veronica has now created her own studio space immersed in nature and next to her home where she is able to concentrate on developing her own work. Her themes are the same but she is experimenting with new techniques such as using robots and creating centaurs with very thin legs. She remains very close with her friends from La Polveriera.

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This episode refers to:

• Anna Stella Belli, linguist and art curator
• Studio La Polveriera
• Franco Cervietti

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Filippo is a vivacious 24-year-old student at Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara which was founded in 1769 by Maria Teresa Cybo, princess of Carrara, to support the marble industry. The Academy was founded with two schools: sculpture and architecture, but over the centuries painting, scenography, decoration and graphics were added. However, Filippo has chosen to specialise in the most recent addition: new art technologies, founded in 1999, which trains artists in digital media skills.

Filippo has lived his whole life in Monteggiori, a small fortified medieval village dating back to 1224, perched above Pietrasanta with a strategic view over the Versilia plains and the sea. As cars are forbidden, everyone has to walk up the steep cobbled path carrying their provisions, and if anyone urgently needs the hospital you’ll see men bobbing down over the cobbles bearing them on a stretcher. There’s a brown dog on duty in the car park and many feisty cats which wander from house to house demanding food and attention. It’s a close-knit and colourful community.

Filippo’s parents run La Bottega dell’Arte, and being experts in the traditional arts of gilding and silvering, restore furniture, picture frames and antiques. Using these skills they have done restoration projects for the church of San Stefano in Monteggiori. Meanwhile, Filippo straddles both the old world and the new. This is reflected in the two projects he’s chosen for his course theses, both of which he hopes will give something back to his village.

His first thesis will explore how the digital revolution could help modernise the exhibition space of Monteggiori Arte, a cultural association and gallery space located in an historic home. The gallery can be found as you walk up into the village next to the frescoed arch, with a dragon by artist Tano Pisano, weaving in and out of its walls.

For the second thesis, Filippo uses 3D technology to create a spare key for San Stefano church. He presents the key to the priest during a special Sunday service and in a slideshow on his iPad (set within a gilded picture frame devised in his parents’ workshop) shows the congregation how the various stages of reverse engineering created the key.

LinkedIn: /filippodalleluche

Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara

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With abstract calligraphic lines, Julia Vance creates sculptural forms in white Italian Statuario marble. She tells us how she created a modern altar, font and pulpit for a new church in Hønefoss, Norway, which replaced the previous church which had burnt down.

In this episode, Julia describes a piece she was finishing called Passage to Knowledge. Carved in black granite, this monumental sculpture is like a huge letter Q, signifying a question. It comprises a circle with a tail, and is a portal you can pass through.

Julia believes the value of questions is far more important than students being filled up with answers. Passage to Knowledge was unveiled in the schoolyard of the newly opened Flesberg school, Norway, in September 2019. Julia created the piece to honour curiosity and encourage children to engage and play with it.

Another work which plays with calligraphic forms is HOLD #2. This sculpture is inspired by the sweeping lines and curves of the letters H, L and D. The piece invites you to curl up inside the cavity and become the missing letter O. Before going on display in Holland Park, London, HOLD #2 was shown in front of the Norwegian Parliament.

The sculpture group WE-ME #5 was inspired by the idea that the word ‘me’ can easily be turned upside-down to form a ‘we’, much the same way an individual ‘me’ can join a group and become part of a ‘we’. First displayed in 2014 in front of Oslo Central station, the piece has wheels fastened to the side allowing members of the public to rotate the words.

Since 2005 Julia has divided her time between Norway and Italy, creating her letter- and word-inspired sculptures. Having spent most of the pandemic in Norway, she is looking forward to returning to her studio in Pietrasanta to work on new commissions.

juliavance.no

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Royal Society of Sculptors

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Guus Jooss lives in Holland but comes to Pietrasanta in Italy for several months a year to work in marble.

Guus used to work as a museum teacher and researcher in the Netherlands when he wasn’t creating his own art. Before that, he went to an art academy in Utrecht for a year, but mostly learnt about sculpture through doing the work himself. He also did some teaching and found himself describing for his students skills that he didn’t realise he’d learnt.

When working in marble he considers himself rather old-fashioned as his heroes are artists of earlier generations: Henry Moore, Constantin Brâncuși, Alberto Viani, Isamu Noguchi and Hans Arp, all of whom had a classical, figurative, training but then moved on to pure form. He likes the honesty of one form made in one material.

With an affinity to antiquity, Guus makes collages that reference his love of history. Old civilizations that are lost are recreated by him in images which look a little like tapestries or Persian rugs. He’s fascinated by the regularity of geometric patterns that Islamic artists made in the sixth and seventh centuries. He talks us through his process and the way he expresses the layers of history.

Guus tells how Homo Ludens, a book by Dutch historian and cultural theorist Johan Huizinga, explains the importance of play in society. Like Huizinga, Guus believes that adult creativity should be approached with the same urgency that a child approaches play, that is to say, as a matter of life and death.

A keen swimmer, Guus found that open water swimming strengthened his lungs after what may, or may not have been, a dose of Covid. At the beginning of lockdown he enjoyed the chance to focus on work, but the need for a hug finally forced him to admit that isolation was actually a difficult experience.

Since this episode was recorded in September 2020, we’ve had another winter of lockdown. Like others who moved out of towns and cities during the pandemic, Guus relocated from Utrecht to the countryside where he has fresher air and more studio space.

guusjooss.nl

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Badriah Hamelink comes from a family of Dutch intellectuals. Her mother is a professor, while her father is the poet and writer Jaques Hamelink. Her grandmother founded the first Arab study centre in the Netherlands.

Her own artistic development however has leant more towards the intuitive than the rational, and when she followed her nose to Pietrasanta she sought mentoring from the artist Armen Agop. Badriah also credits Martin Foot who taught her many carving techniques.

Badriah’s abstract style explores the essence of our existence, and what lies beneath it.

The piece A3A is visible from both sides. The two objects act as a duet and, as is often the case with kindred spirits, the apparent similarity of the objects also directs the viewers’ attention to their minute differences.

Recently Badriah had a near-fatal accident due to a four-and-a-half metre fall resulting in heavy concussion. While recovering, she started playing around with and reworking old images she’d taken, by ‘mirroring’ some of them. What she discovered led her to an awareness of the importance of reflection and symmetry as a way of expressing the qualities of balance and equanimity.

Badriah found that if you held a shape against a mirror you immediately see something organic – even the most inorganic surface will seem to produce an organism in front of your eyes. It’s what our minds are wired to do.

The first piece that Badriah made after her accident was PROLIFERATIO which consists of a block of two tons of salt, split in half and a cast of the rupture in black polyester. Where the pure and natural salt has opened up, the black synthetic proliferates out of its core, as if a tumour growing at the same speed as the mineral. It seems to suggest: ‘At the moment of birth our death is born as well’ which, Badriah says, is the only certainty we have. This work is currently in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art Sotto Sale, Sicily.

The relief, A5B.2, was inspired by photographs from the Hubble deep space telescope of two extraordinarily thin galaxies, NGC 4452 and OPO 0624. Badriah created a heightmap of the visual data and based a sculpture on it’s features. The work re-materializes the far-away light sources to throw a rippling onto the physical surface.

In 2017 Badriah founded Atelier BSH which continues to produce her artworks in stone and metal. Her work has been displayed in galleries and museums in New York, Luxembourg, Stockholm, Milan, Prague, Hawaii and Amsterdam.

Constantly experimenting with new materials and always driven to further her career as an artist, Badriah recently applied herself to learning the ancient Japanese art of stone splitting.

badriah-hamelink.com

instagram.com/badriah_hamelink

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Born in Wales, Neil Ferber started his creative life making models and objects in his parents’ garden shed. After art college he made his way to Italy with his wife, writer Kathleen Jones, where he discovered the artist community working in marble and based himself in several of the studios there. At the time of our interview he was packing-up from Studio La Polveriera in Pietrasanta and now mainly works in Cumbria at his Mill studios.

Neil’s sculptures are abstract and often architectural or geometric in form, initially created in clay or wax before being cast in a variety of more permanent materials. He composes fully three-dimensional pieces where no one view dominates, all being of equal interest. Neil’s work is held in private collections in Italy, Sweden, England and the USA.

Neil speaks of his friendship with Italian-born Fiore de Henriquez in Peralta. She was sculptor to the famous, a flamboyant character and proud hermaphrodite who created portrait sculptures of John F Kennedy, Igor Stravinsky and the Queen Mother and is credited for introducing Cubist sculptor Jacques Lipchitz to Pietrasanta. In love with clay, a film of her life by Richard Whymark, tells more of her story.

Our interview took place in il CRO di Pietrasanta, an historic workers’ restaurant which has fed generations of artisans and remains a meeting place for artists. On the walls frames have been painted in which artists can sketch their contributions, while live music nights are a popular fixture here.

neilferber.co.uk

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Cynthia Sah was born in Hong Kong and studied in the USA. She first came to Italy in 1978 to study and came back soon after to learn with the artisans. She has stayed ever since and now works in a studio complex with her partner, Nicolas Bertoux.

Inspired by the form, movement and colours that nature gives us, Cynthia tells how she always looks for the spine in a piece. She loves how the energy of a wave – of water, sound or wind – reminds her that we are all connected.

Gallery spaces being altogether different to her studio environment, Cynthia prefers to settle her pieces into their new home personally. But lockdown entailed her having to learn to curate a show long-distance this year. Here she describes the process.

Cynthia creates public art for all over the world. She talks about a special commission she did for a grieving daughter in memory of her father, called Balance & Counterbalance.

Underpinning her public art is the idea that sculptures should be friendly and invite you to touch or sit on them.

Finally Cynthia takes me to their basement, and what was originally a trout farm feeding the Medicis in the Palace opposite. This breathtaking long gallery is now their exhibition space, where they host events for their non-profit foundation, Arkad.

cynthiasah.it

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After studying zoology, then going to art school in Bournemouth, Anne tells how it was the traditional teaching of Signorina Simi in Florence that made her feel she was finally in the right place.

Anne stayed in touch with her fellow students who learnt with the artist and teacher Nera Simi (1890–1987) alongside her in the 1980s. Even when it was seen as out of fashion, Nera Simi continued to teach by the atelier method having learnt it from her father, Filadelfo Simi who had studied under Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904). This link with the past gave Anne a close connection to the classic academic traditions of the late 1800s. Recently she felt moved to do a bust of her highly esteemed teacher which she called simply, Nera Simi.

Anne has lived in Italy since 1980 and developed her own painting style combining her keen sense of observation, love of animals and Renaissance drafting skills. For many years she has also been coming to Pietrasanta to cast her sculptures in the foundries.

Facing the future, a bronze of a male mute swan flapping its wings after preening, is the culmination of Anne’s long-held dream to sculpt a larger-than-life-size swan. It was cast at Fonderia Artistic Mariani and in a PDF on her website she describes how the sculpture was created.

During the first, strict, lockdown in Italy Anne says she felt like a prisoner in her own home. Her painting Balcony expresses the fear she experienced during this period. When it became apparent that she might be at home for some time, she decided to set achievable goals to give herself a routine. Every evening she painted the sunset from her balcony initiating a project involving the close study of light. You can read more about this on her blog.

It was during this project that she noticed how each evening a passenger train passed by and the moving carriages picked up and reflected the setting sunlight. As well as the train, little glints of strong light could be glimpsed elsewhere too — on the gutterings, the aerials and the shiny-leaved magnolia tree, the top of which Anne could just include in the foreground of her painting, The 7:30 train.

Anne describes the close relationship between sculptor and model, and the moment the sculpture ‘comes to life’ for the artist. She references the painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme (below). The motif is taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and depicts the sculptor Pygmalion kissing his statue Galatea at the moment the goddess Aphrodite brings her to life.

www.anneshingleton.com

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Originally from Paris, Nicolas first came to Carrara with his father, also a sculptor, who was working on a monumental piece at Henraux.

Now he lives and works in Seravezza, northern Tuscany with his partner Cynthia Sah, in an extraordinary pre-industrial building which was once an historic sawmill, where marble was cut for the very first time by water-powered machinery.

He was drawn to move to the area not because of the studios and artisans, but because of the quarries. He likens the search for raw material to buying your food at a farm instead of a supermarket. He wants to talk to the quarrymen and know the chain of production.

The Wind Tree project was due to be installed just as the pandemic hit so instead of installing the piece himself Nicolas had to box it very carefully, then guide people at the other end to erect it in his absence.

When Nicolas was approached by the coastguard, and forced to pay an administrative fine for a lack of paperwork, he and other sculptors created a work of protest – Protesta (Yell).

nicolasbertoux.it

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Co-founder of Studio Pescarella near Pietrasanta, Jaya was born in California, moved to Switzerland with her family as a teenager, and later lived in Hawaii where she worked in papier-mâché, lava and basalt. In 1986 she came to Carrara attracted by the marble quarries. Jaya says ‘it’s important to me that my sculptures feel alive, pulling out the aliveness in the stone, showing the absolute connection that stone has for me with life.’

At one point in the interview Jaya explains how she experiences the difference between the white marbles of Italy, Greece and China. We also hear how important it was for her to learn skills from the artisans of Pietrasanta when she first arrived.

Physics, gravity, black holes and planetary motion have long been a source of inspiration for Jaya, perhaps because of her background. As well as art, she also studied engineering, biology and botany. The theme of suspension is important to her as a metaphor for the tensions of life. In Exploded Spheres, a series of works seek to describe the release of tension. A larger scale work, Suspended Cube, shows how the tension in the cables keeps everything suspended.

Jaya enjoys creating in wax, especially in winter when she can work in front of a hot wax pot. In the process of renovating her house she hurt her hand which meant wielding a hammer and chisel on white marble was not feasible until it healed. Instead, Jaya picked up some wax and created a series of original, unique sculptures, later casting them into bronzes. She reflects on the amazingly varied forms life can take, and how strange it was to have sold one of her pieces – which looked very similar to the coronavirus – to her dentist in 2019.

We talked about lockdown, about the soothing qualities of baking bread and of meditation. Sound of One Hand Clapping references a Buddhist meditation mantra.

Jaya used to be a sailplane instructor in the Alps and there were a few occasions when eagles would fly with her. Those experiences led her to try and capture that magical feeling of soaring within her work Flying.

Jaya made Challah during the first phase of the pandemic and it references one of her favourite poems, A common woman by poet, activist, and scholar Judy Grahn. She created it as a loaf and hopes you might feel you could pull off a section of it. She finds baking a restorative process and suggests it fits well with the preoccupations of lockdown: bread being regarded as the foundation of human life – feeding yourself, your spirit, and others.

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