The stone that carves the sculptor

After few of the latest works in lime and sand stone I’m back to marble, with the biggest attempt so far on this stone. It was hard at the beginning, needed to buy specialised marble tool for it. But after a while your muscles get used to a different stone. I remember switching from Ancaster to Maltese, a very soft stone: it was terrible, my shoulders, neck, arms and all the joints were used to ancaster and carving on maltese was like to cut trhough butter. I think maybe this is one of the reason some artists stick to marble once they started with it. It’s difficult to go back to softer stones. It’s a stone that gives you a good fight, it seasons you and keeps you challenged all the time.

Sometimes we focus too much on us carving the stone, but what about the stone carving us? What about the stone shaping our muscles, our very structure of the body to such extent that we depend on it? And the brain. How much we forget about the forging and remapping of the brain connections while we are carving. When an artist carves the stone he/she needs to synchronise tridimensional sight, internal representation of the object (past, present and future of the stone are dwelling at the very same moment in the brain), hands movement, body movement, light and shadow changes etc. All this require a massive and constant remapping of our neural connections (hippocampus, visual cortex, motor cortex, ganglia of the peripheral nervous system etc.). Therefore, in a way when you carve a stone you are carving yourself in the process. Never understimate that inanimate object in front of you, you would be surprised of how much can change your life.