Ballerina Becomes a Whale

Dear Art Lover,

     Okay, despite the title of this post that I found amusing, no, I did not force feed any ballerinas!  I have returned to the Cava Nardini (Nardini Quarry, in English) to start to carve stone again.  Last fall I started to carve a piece of green marble with white veining that I bought in Pietrasanta, Italy, from a friend of a friend while I dropped off a new composition at a local bronze casting foundry. http://www.borsheimarts.com/sculpture/2016/RockTowersFrogGardenSculpture.htm

     I wanted to learn how to stay at the abstract level, perfect for a stone with a busy pattern of contrasting tones.  I saw a ballerina throwing up a large piece of fabric above her and her flowing gown.  You may see images in one of my blog posts about this stone carving here:

http://artbyborsheim.blogspot.it/2016/10/autumn-in-quarry-vellano-tuscany.html

     While the doctor told me that I should not try to carve stone until four months have passed after the removal of the cast on my broken right wrist, he also told me that after two months I would feel mostly back to normal.  I do not.  I do not have the flexibility back and when I try to push the hand to stretch it, there is pain still.  The cast was removed on 30 June.  My first thought was that if I am not “normal” after the two months, maybe it will be six months instead of four before I should attempt to carve stone.  The vibration too much, too soon, could ruin my wrist for the rest of my life.  I do not want to screw this up since my knee has still not healed.  I am nervous about why things are not getting better.  

     Still, I am not the sharpest tool in the shed, although I might be the one with the hardest head.  The symposium at the quarry is mostly over and the weather has cooled dramatically from this summer, to what I would call perfect carving weather [now that it has stopped raining].  I recently began returning to the quarry to start work again on my ballerina and the other black crystal marble piece I bought at the same time.  I justified that now that I have a car, I am not obligated to spend an entire day there if I need to call it a day sooner than the others.  I also brought more of my die grinders from Texas this past spring and decided that I could grind these chippy rocks, since a hammer and chisel will only destroy them anyway.  I have been using my left hand mostly, while trying to exercise my right a bit more than I was at home.

     I had been watching a crack that was obvious in one section of the dress of the ballerina where a white vein met the green, but we all thought that it MIGHT be a small section since the crack seemed to fizzle out.  One seasoned carver asked me if I wanted to put some glue into the stone, but I am old school… if I know there is a crack in the rock, I need to remove the dead stone and redesign.  Glue seems to me to be just a Band-Aid. 

     And then it happened:   the rock separated.  The section was where I imagined, but deeper.  And, once I pulled off the piece you see in this first image, you may see in the second image that there was now exposed the larger issue [see the crack where I put the red arrows].  The original bottom for the ballerina sculpture is the plane on the right [not visible].  Her billowing fabric is the curve on the left/top edge of the stone.

     It was not difficult to remove the rest.  This was about one-third of the stone!  I was upset, even though I knew the fear was a probable reality.  But then, I justified that my intention was to learn something new and to push myself into abstraction a little bit more.  Ok, so the idea changed, but the exercise is still the same.  Imagine my delight when I looked fresh at the larger piece of rock and saw a whale!  In fact, the leftover tool marks from my diamond disc reminded me of teeth or at least the mouth of the sperm whale… hahah.   Do you see it here?  I am not so great with Photoshop, but tried to draw a thin red curve to follow the flow that made me feel the ocean.

 

Do you see the whale form?  No longer a ballerina in any event.

     The shape is not perfect for that, by any means.  Nor is there enough rock to create accurately the form of the whale, but that still was a bit of the point, no?  I turned the stone to other views and other positions.  I got a kick later at home when I saw the tree coming out of a fish-shaped form, as if it were a vase.  I was so busy looking at the marble that I did not compose my shot other than trying to find something dark behind the marble to show me the form.

Fish Vase?  ;-)

    From the viewpoint in the image below, I actually saw a standing figure – with a triangular neck and head, short triangular arms, and carrying some sort of a pack on his back.  Do you see that also?  Or something else?  Or nothing promising?  

Figure carrying a sack on his back?

vertical jumping whale, maybe?

     In my lips series of stone carving, [see the Zebra Lips as an example here:  http://www.borsheimarts.com/sculpture/stone.htm

], I tried to create other shapes on the back side of the lips.  Not sure that the transitions were all that successful, but the morphing idea intrigues me still.  How to start?  Well, I remembered my friend and mentor Vasily’s voice, “Start with a line that shows your idea.  Make everything else support that line.”    And so, I leave you with my note-taking on the green marble to refine the curve of the whale form that I showed you earlier. Happy weekend!

     In addition, I recently published my September art newsletter with the theme, “Wind, Water, and Wisteria” because alliteration is just fun.  You may read the whole thing online with lots more images here:  http://www.borsheimarts.com/news/201709_Artnews_WindWaterWisteria.htm

Peace,

Kelly Borsheim, artist

http://BorsheimArts.com

P.S. IF original art, while affordable, is STILL a bit out of your budget, or the piece you adored has sold?  Or do you like arty things in different formats, to surround yourself with art?  Looking for a gift?  See my store online for pillow, phone cases, shower curtains, towels, tote bags, and yes, even prints on metal, wood, canvas, and so much more:

https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/1-kelly-borsheim.html

Still Life Paintings on a Shelf

Dear Art-loving friend,

I am out the door for another guest this weekend, but I wanted to share two new paintings with you.  And also invite you to read my latest Art Newsletter, this one about the Baptistery in Pisa.  Nicola Pisano’s pulpit changed the art world and I show you why.

http://www.borsheimarts.com/news/2014_11_ArtNews-PisaBaptisteryNicolaPisano.htm

In the same way that I saw my recently sold painting "Tuscan Table" as "comfort art.," I created the "shelf paintings" with a similar emotion.

So, I hope that you enjoy "Sitting on a Shelf" a 68 x 68 cm (26.8 x 26.8 inches) oil on canvas painting featuring old books and a headless puppet (is that comfort? ha!).

The other work is an oil painting on a primed wooden panel (gesso vero) that measures 40 x 60 cm (15.7 x 23.6 inches). "Queen of the Shelf" depicts another collection of old books with other goodies in the composition, including a patina-ed lop-sided plaster sculpture of a woman's head with crown.

Please contact me if you would like pricing information for your own collection or to buy as a gift. Also, please visit one of the galleries that carry my artworks. You may find those here: www.borsheimarts.com/galleries.htm

Thank you. 

++++

If you are enjoying this blog, the writing and/or the images, it would help me continue if you could send a donation my way.  Just go to the blog online and on the right column there are PayPal links for making a donation.  Choose any amount you desire, even five bucks helps! 

Or further down the page, you will see a more indirect way to help:  Go shopping online via the search window under “Support This Blog Via Amazon”  Your author is an affiliate and clicking here first sends a donation with each purchase you make on a click-through. 

A third way you may help is to forward this blog to someone you think may appreciate it.  The more readers, the more comments online, and wallah… lovers of art and Italy unite.

http://artbyborsheim.blogspot.com

Thank you for your interest and enthusiasm,

Kelly

~ Kelly Borsheim, sculptor, painter, writer, teacher

http://BorsheimArts.com

Detail image of "Sitting on a Shelf"  Italy

Carrara Marble Pietrasanta Sculpture

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Well, what a surprise to learn that this is my 600th blog post! Who knew that I had it in me? So, I am happy that what I wanted to write about was my recent trip to Carrara and Pietrasanta, Italy. Marble is my drug of choice and I miss carving it very much. However, like my dream to have a dog, some things will have to wait until their time comes again.

My friend and fellow sculptor Gilbert Barrera came to Italy from San Antonio, Texas. We met each other MANY years ago when he came to Austin, specifically the Elisabet Ney Sculpture Conservatory, and met our group up there. Like me, Gilbert came to Italy to improve his art skills. This first image is of the two of us standing next to his current project in Carrara, Italy. He wants to carve this marble all with hand tools… good enough for Michelangelo, afterall. I am too impatient for that sort of thing, but respect that we all have different goals in life. At least Gilbert is doing SOMETHING with stone now!

We then headed to Pietrasanta for some lunch and sculpture viewing. “Convenient” is rarely a word one thinks of when Italia comes to mind. With the poorly timed train schedules to these industrial towns, one usually finds oneself here during the long lunch hour and things are mostly closed. However, il Museo dei Bozzetti was open. Housed inside of the library, the museum is where they keep a decent collection of plaster sculptures that were used as the models for artists to copy their works into marble. Direct carving is not as well known as in the States.

My favorite works here are those of Leone Tommasi, sculptor active around 1930s and 1940s. His realism in the human figures is like a caress in his sensitive forms. When Gilbert saw the reclining Jesus sculpture, he remarked that Tommasi understands well the form in gravity. Like Pietro Annigoni, Leoni Tommasi was creating a very different style of work from what was popular in his own time. I am glad his stuck to his guns. The next images you see here are all the works of Leone Tommasi.

After all of this, I had to show Gilbert the piece that completely surprised me during my first visit to Pietrasanta in 2004. Charles Umlauf was a sculptor who lived, worked, and taught in Austin, Texas. He even has his own museum there and the Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum is a real gem in the town! Naturally, I have spent time there and am familiar with his work. I was stunned to bump into his “Eve” so many years ago! Later, Nelie Plourde, director of the Umlauf Gardens, told me, as I related to Gilbert yesterday, that Charles Umlauf found it better and cheaper to create the art here in Pietrasanta, cast it into bronze here, and then SHIP it to the USA. Here we are posing (using my self-timer on the camera) with Umlauf’s “Eve.”

Finally, I leave you with a sculpture that amuses and charms me. It was sculpted by Giulio Ciniglia and is titled “L’ora” (The Time) from 1992. Ok, I have got to go. Just look at …

The Kindness of Strangers and an Angry Nun

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

The short version of how I met Rita: I made a nun angry on a train. The Kelly version … hmmm:

Almost a year ago, I had flown from Florida to New York to Milano, Italia. From there I boarded a train to Firenze. It was mid-December. It was cold, the holidays were fast approaching, and I was alone. My divorce was final months before, I had packed up my life in America, traveled around to see as much of my family as I could, and again, I was returning to Italia without a love that I thought I had. In addition, my Italian landlady had jerked me around on my contract for a room in my former flat. While I would be staying at a friend’s place as I waited for my room to become available, I also knew that being in that place alone surrounded with my memories would make the winter feel even colder.

To top it all off, I had more luggage than I could manage alone. I met a man named Terry on the flight from NYC to Milano. [That was a story with a happy “ending.”] I helped him buy his train ticket to Firenze and he offered to take my portfolio of current art projects with him in first class. I could not even pretend to afford to ride with him and simply hoped that I had met an honest man. Thus, in boarding second class with my other full suitcases, I was in a low emotional place, physically tired, and feeling quite vulnerable. The car was full, except for my seat. I saw a space for my larger bag and proceeded to remove a small backpack so that my bag would not crush it.

After pushing my bag into the space, I put the backpack on top of my luggage. Before I even turned around, I realized that I was being yelled at . . . by a nun no less! No one had spoken Italian to me in about a year and a half so it took me a while to understand her words, but as luck would have it, a nun is not unlike most people. She repeated her points until she was sure there was no doubt in anyone’s mind about her position. Basically, she told me that I was raised wrong by my parents, and that I was rude and inconsiderate: The backpack was hers and I should have asked her permission before I touched it. [Thank GOD she was a nun or I would have received much more colorful insults!]

Embarrassed, belittled by a NUN, and already in a sad state of affairs, I think I just alternated a response of “scusa” with a “grazie” until she stopped yelling. I dropped down into my seat and put my other suitcase on my lap, squeezing its hard shape like it was a teddy bear as I felt tears well up and start to run down my face. In all of the scenes I can imagine, I had never envisioned this would be how I would start the new phase of my life!

As the train began its journey, I started to notice a very elegant man watching me from a nearby seat. He was much older than I and very beautifully dressed. His white hair topped a long and distinguished-looking face, the kind an artist would love to paint or sculpt. Each time I looked away, I felt myself looking back. He had such kind eyes and a lovely expression. He gave me a gentle smile and some time to relax, but at some point, he stood up and I could see that he was quite tall as well. He walked over and in a soft voice asked me if he could take the suitcase off of my lap and lift it up in the storage shelf above me. I let him and he returned to his seat. There was nothing to feel but gratitude.

Shortly after that, I heard the voice of an angel. She spoke to me in English and while I do not remember her exact words, they were along the lines of, “What a ridiculous nun!” The helping hands of strangers and Rita’s kind words opened up the world to me in that moment. She was sitting next to the nun, who sat across from me. (I only learned that yesterday because there was another nun sitting across from the elegant gentleman in the next section over. I thought she was the one, but the one who yelled pretended to be asleep after I finished with the bags.) I was sitting next to a man named Giorgio. After Rita broke the ice, she and Giorgio and I spent the rest of the train trip getting to know one another a bit and then Giorgio helped us with our understanding of Italian verbs. I arrived in Firenze a less frazzled woman. I also met Terry’s fiancé, Hanaa, at the stazione a Firenze and they both helped me take ALL of my bags to a taxi.

All of this to explain how I came to enjoy the most wonderful day with Rita yesterday in Firenze! She and her husband Tim are back in Italia for a short stay and I was delighted to see that the event Florens 2012 is currently happening.

Just outside of Zecchi’s art supply yesterday morning on my way to the studio, I ran into my long-time friend Alessandro. I had not seen him in over two years and we caught up over “un caffè.” He told me about the large marble cross art installation going on in Piazza Santa Croce. An Italian artist Mimmo Paladino has filled the square with a huge artwork of mixed materials, mostly marble. I thought this would be a perfect start to the tour of Firenze I would give my new friends after our lunch together.

Rita, Tim, and I met up at the Residenza il Villino where they were staying, not far from Teatro Pergola. Proprietors Elisabetta and Sergio are wonderful, with the kinds of smiles, warmth, and humor that have made Italian hospitality famous. I recommend staying there when you come to Firenze.

Our lunch included the porcini mushrooms shown here. Delicious!

We wandered on down to Piazza Santa Croce, whose basilica houses the tomb of the wonderful Michelangelo and many other great Florentines. I was delighted to see the snow-like field of tiny white pebbles covering the normally grey stoned floor of the piazza. Huge chunks of marble made me regret AGAIN leaving my stone-carving tools in America. Sigh… however, it was refreshing to see so many people enjoying the stones, including climbing up all over the artwork.

My friend Alessandro, an architect who lives right off of Piazza Santa Croce, told me that he was dismayed that so many of his neighbors just did not understand (and therefore like) this marble installation. But Ale and I agreed that it is beautiful to see the piazza in white and also to see how the people are interacting with the stone. [And after hanging out with him at his place last night, I must say that the crowds around the art installation were MUCH more fun than the obnoxious drunks hanging around in the streets that shout grunts repeatedly into the night just under Ale’s window. He said that Saturday nights are the worst and they are always like this now that more bars haved moved into the neighborhood. Sadly, Firenze might be going the way of Venezia…]

Anyway, Rita and Tim and I toured the central part of the city. We saw the sculptures in Piazza della Signoria and I showed them the spot on which occurred the Bonfires of the Vanities, as well as the execution of its originator, Savonarola, once the tide changed again. We caught the tail end of a parade just before we visited with my colleague madonnari (street painters). We saw some of the life in Piazza della Repubblica, including a weekend market of Italian-made food and herbal products. And we even visited the famous artist hangout, Le Giubbe Rosse.. There was a show of etchings going on and we met the artist. Also, some of the “gang” was there, as often the case, and Rita decided that I was famous, since I seem to run into people who know me wherever we go. Ha. Sweet.

We soon headed back to Elisabetta and Sergio and ended up at a favorite place of Florentines with tasty pizza. So, here we are, the five of us enjoying a lively and saucy conversation about love, marriage, and … how to be an Italian husband. Sergio and Elisabetta sure know how to make people feel welcome and as if you knew them forever – and would want to.

They walked me to my bike in Piazza Salvemini and from there I headed over to Alessandro’s home for a fun catch-up visit. What a glorious day yesterday was and I look forward to many more like it.

Stone Turtles 500 blog posts

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

This is my 500th blog post! And I want to talk turtles. I am still working on the details of my marble “Gymnast” and hope that you have been following along. I must admit that I am running out of energy right about now, so I hope that you will pardon me for just adding these images of one of the heads on the four-headed turtle who supports the “Gymnast.” I am having a fun time with the subtle and different textures I am carving into the stone. And it brings a smile to think of turtle lips!

Sculpture Show Invitation – Wesley Gallery, Texas

22-23 October 2011
Sat: 10 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Sun: noon - 5:00 p.m.

Metal and Stone Sculpture Show hosted by Wesley Gallery
Wesley Gallery
27008 RR12, Ste. A
Dripping Springs, Texas 78620
For information, please contact Julie Speir at the gallery via telephone at 888.806.0678
E-mail: art@wesleygallery.com

I hope you can make it (and yeah, I will have some copies of my new book “My Life as a Street Painter in Florence, Italy” available this weekend – signed too, if you like.

Cat and Sculpture

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Well, I am back, sort of. I trust you are enjoying the holiday months. I have been working almost non-stop for such a long time, but am happy to say that I am making progress. The book I am writing about my experiences street painting in Italy has now gone to the graphic designer to work her magic. What I have seen thus far looks really, really good and I cannot wait for the day that I can say that the book is READY!

When I returned to my studio after a couple of weeks away, I began again to carve the marble gymnast and discovered that I had a new companion of sorts. No doubt, I will lose a couple of friends with this admission, but I have never been much of a small cat person. Still, people who abandon cats are much lower on my list of favorite things. . Out where I live now, her presence is no accident.

Cat (think Audrey Hepburn in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”) is quite a young cat. She is sweet and has funny markings on her face, with a bushy tail more in line with a raccoon than a kitten her size. Her eyes are more orange than yellow. She has sharp little teeth surrounding that raspy tongue, but surprisingly, her little bites on my fingers and toes do not hurt as much as cat bites in my memory. Perhaps she is only being affectionate.

Cat craves attention, as any abandoned creature would. While I have been stopping my work at times to sit down and cuddle with her a bit, I do not have as much patience in the morning as I might otherwise have. Sadly, with about a month of daily temperatures easily over 100 degrees F., I am no longer working outside in the evenings. I find the air too heavy and my other work has more appeal. So the mornings are precious time and I am feeling quite protective of it, selfishly saving those hours for the marble sculpture.

In any event, progress continues regardless of delays and Cat now has food and water, and sometimes me.

Flossing Marble

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

On occasion I wonder if there is something wrong with me. Today there was one such occasion. I always seem to push myself to the point of “why are you making this more complicated than it has to be?” or, at least, more complicated (read “costly”) than other professional artists would bother with. And yet, I have decided that it is this extra detail that makes the art perhaps worthy of awe and keeps me challenged and intellectually engaged. [Most often, the reason is about how the light falls on the form, such as in the space around the legs in “Eric” and the deep hole between the figures in “Together and Alone.”] I also am learning something new, although sometimes I think the lesson is “Boy, I never wanna do THAT again!” [No, seriously, I am happy when I pull off the complicated part and think the idea works how I intended.]

In this case, I am speaking about my current work-in-progress, the “Gymnast” in Colorado Yule Marble. The female figure is sitting in a pike position, feet reaching to the sky, as she tucks her chin close to her chest, her forehead pushed up against her shins. Her head will be in profile and yet there is enough air space between the folded up body parts that my hope is to carve a beautiful face that I can barely access.


I received some wonderful measuring tools last Christmas. The one shown is a depth gauge. I have drawn (and redrawn as needed each time the marble gets removed) the centerline for the face and legs. And I work out from this line to shape the face. I recently bought a die grinder with a 3-inch extension and this helps me reach inside amazingly well. It is slow going, but I prefer more thinking to wrong cutting. In stone carving, I only get one chance, after all.


While I do focus in one area of an artwork for a good amount of time, I also step back and take a look often at the entire composition. It is not long before I start creating other lines from other viewpoints than strictly working the profile (image # 2).

Many years ago at the MARBLE/marble Sculpture Symposium in Marble, Colorado, I saw a diamond-coated rod that was designed to be added to a hacksaw. It looked cool to me, so I bought it. A couple of years ago, I saw it lying there unused in my toolbox and chided myself for my enthusiastic, but misguided decision.

That said, today I realized that ”flossing marble” is the very thing I need to do! And of the tools that I have, this diamond wire might be the safest one to use for this task. How else can I remove a long and narrow portion of marble between the nose and legs of the “Gymnast”?

I just wish that it did not take so long . . .

If you like what you read, enjoy the photos, and would like to help support this blog(ger) / artist, click here . . .

Shimmering Sugar Stone

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

So, I began to trim up the feet on the bottoms, and the sunlight hit the natural beak in the stone . . . really, it takes my breath away sometimes. I ran indoors to get my camera.

Marble is "Shimmering Stone" - can you see the light on the crystalline specs in the naturally broken part?
In 2004, Dr. Fabio Biselli gave me a tour of one of the "cave" (quarries) in Carrara, Italy. He bragged to me how the famous Carrara marble was "like sugar" in its whiteness.
I suggested that he not use that terminology with many American carvers. In Marble, Colorado, when we refer to a stone as being "like sugar," we are referring to the quality of softness -- dissolving easily. Sugar stone is cut away and redesigning is done as needed.

Yin / yang works that way -- the same word can be interpreted to be a strength or a weakness. I do not have sugar in this stone (at least thus far), and my regret at the moment is that these images have not truly captured the lustre in the stone. She is a beaut!

Vulnerability Achilles Heel

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

There are two types of vulnerability: the kind you have control over and the kind that you do not. An Achilles’ Heel is a good example of vulnerability as a liability. The phrase comes from the legend of the Greek hero Achilles. The story is that his mother Thetis wanted to protect him by dipping him into the River Styx to make her son invulnerable. However, she held him by his heel with her thumb and forefinger (a strong mother!), thus blocking the magical waters from reaching all of him. Achilles is said to have died by an arrow shot into this same heel.

I suspect that it was this type of vulnerability, the fatal flaw, that then-President George W. Bush was thinking about after the horrible events on September 11, 2001. One of his initial reactions was to try to stop immigration into America.. After all, if we do not permit (more) foreigners to enter America, they cannot hurt us. America should not be so vulnerable. Right?

Well, . . . I was less than pleased. But I realized that I tend to see vulnerability as the greatest gift one could offer another. Thus the idea for my next sculpture “The Offering” was born. Sure, when we make ourselves vulnerable to another, we can be hurt. But I decided that if this vulnerability is our choice, then we come from a position of strength and goodness. Some things others cannot control.

In body language, one exhibits a lack of fear by exposing one’s torso. You will see this in many painted and sculptural depictions of political leaders. In essence, a brave and secure person is sending the message, “I can be vulnerable to you and invincible, too.”
The opposite position would be the curled up, closed fetal position that is designed to protect us. Our skeleton protects our vulnerable bellies.


Here are a few images that I took back in 2002 of the beginning of my marble carving, “The Offering.” Strangely enough, the middle images were taken on my late mentor Vasily Fedorouk’s birthday, August 16. I had met him only one summer before and it is evident by the sloppy crayon drawings that I made on my stone, that I have not yet begun to learn much from him . . .

Vulnerability: strength or weakness? As is so often, context is everything.

Canadian Marble

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

I have been back in my Texas home studio since July. Although I love the mountains and found Austria to be a very beautiful country, I learned long ago that I get the “withdrawal shakes” if I am not creating art for more than a week. I was looking forward to getting a hammer and a chisel in my hands again and spent much of my holiday time figuring out which stone I wanted to work with first.

The winner was . . . a project I started in 2002. Inspired by President Bush’s reactions to the horrible events on September 11, 2001, I began a complicated composition in Canadian marble.

I will write more about my thoughts on this work in the coming posts, but here I wanted to include images of the stone as I received her from the quarry in western Canada. These images were taken 25 July 2002 from various angles in the stone. I will be carving a vertical composition.


My apologies for the “naked legs” shots. It is helpful at times to have relative size comparisons. And I like to climb things, so it was more fun to climb up on my wine barrel than to move the stone onto the ground to take a “bird’s eye view” image of the marble.

Stay tuned. Same bat channel . . .

Thinking of two new babies: my marble carving and . . . I would like to take this opportunity to welcome into the world today my newest nephew Evan!