Old World Stone Carving Competition

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Mark your calendars for April 9 & 10, 2011, and join me and about a dozen other stone carving artists for the “L’arte Antica Old World Stone Carving Competition” at The Vineyard at Florence in central Texas. The vineyard and Villa Firenze will house an art exhibit and festival that includes live demonstrations off to one side of the hundreds of acres out there.

2011 April 9 & 10
Saturday: 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Sunday: 11 a.m. - 4 p.m.
The Vineyard
8711 FM 487
Florence, Texas 76527
Contact: KAMBRAH GARLAND at 512-924-7447 or ph. 254.793.3363
www.thevineyardatflorence.com E-mail: stonecarvingevent@gmail.com
The competition will be judged on Sunday afternoon at 2 pm by no less than 3 independent judges. Prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places will be given.

FREE to attend; see paintings, photography, sculpture, art shop (notecards and more)
Oh, and do not forget the wine tasting!

Continental Cut Stone in Florence, Texas, provided the stone. I went into their boneyard and chose a block of PINK limestone! for the mere fact that I have never carved this stone before.

The competition is purely informal. As long as we have two days worth of work to do on our stone, we benefit the viewing public. Since I do not have a portable air compressor, I will be using only hand and electric tools. I also wanted to remove a little bit of the weight of the stone after I came up with my idea for this rock.

Here are some images of the starting of my project. The first image shows my new stone (3rd from the left, in the foreground between the two marbles. A crème limestone block is seen on the far left). In the second image, I increased the contrast and darkened the image so that you can see how I scratched in the circle and vertical bar compositional shapes. Then I drew with pencil (and later crayon) the figure of the angel and the possible stairs on the right. The stairs are a tribute to Michelangelo.



In this last image, you may see the break in the stone beyond the horizontal line I drew. This was also another reason I wanted to start my work early – to get to know the stone. It is very different from the marbles and alabasters that I have carved before. This stone appears to have random air pockets with small orange crystalline forms. I will not work more on this project before the competition in part because the beginning stages are the most dramatic for people to view, but mostly because I have so many other things that require my attention right now. I will leave this stone carving as my play project during the arts weekend at the Vineyard.


I hope that you can make it out there – it is really amazing to see what my colleagues can create in two days! I will also have several 2-d and 3-d works in the art exhibit inside the Villa Firenze, as well as some of my popular art notecards. Join us?

Limestone and a Big Moth

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Today (yesterday now) I went to the Boneyard of Continental Cut Stone in Florence, Texas, to pick up a specifically cut piece of Cordova Crème limestone for my latest commission. It was unusually cold and windy. I guess the Fall Equinox did not wish to arrive unnoticed. And it was raining most of the morning, which is wonderful. Since sculpting was not likely to happen, it was a good day for me to run this errand and hope for a less-wet tomorrow.

The stone quarry is actually several hours away from Florence. The Boneyard is where the stone is cut for use by sculptors, but mostly contractors and builders. It is not unusual for natural stone to either not meet the specs of certain construction projects (holes/embedded shells/distracting grain lines) or get broken or cut wrong. In these cases, the less-than-perfect stone is set out in the Boneyard for people like me. I love searching there for unusual shapes and architectural treasures that I can use as a starting point for a stone carving.

I wanted to share a few images I snapped off today as I walked around the Boneyard. The last time I was here was when I met my friend Vasily Fedorouk on the access road of the IH-35 turnoff to Florence. He had just driven down from Chicago to teach a workshop at my place. We went “shopping” together to pick out the limestone we would supply our students. It was a fun day.

The purple thistle that you see here is an unusual variety (to me anyway). I found the purple and grey combination to be a bit irresistible today.


And to my delight, I saw this large yellow moth on a pile of cut stone tiles. Their bodies are bigger than locusts! Because I tend to leave open all the doors and windows of my home and studio for as long as I can every day, I often see a brown moth enter my kitchen and studio this time of year. But I had yet to see an obviously yellow one. I included my hand in the image so that you can clearly make out his size. Cool huh?



I also saw some pink limestone. It reminded me of someone’s strawberry poundcake. I was tempted to bite into it, but I generally do not prefer the taste of limestone. Too bad all I saw were these tiles and blocks too large for me to carry home on this day. But, hmmmm, it was a curious and yummy sight!