New Studio Anniversary Tuscany

Dear Art Lover,

      Today is an anniversary of sorts for me.  It was one year ago today that a friend of mine introduced me to the man who would become my landlord.  He then showed my friends and me the house that would become my home and studio in the hills of Tuscany.

2015 April 29 - future art studio - Tuscany, Italy

    You may see here that my main studio was not a finished space.  There were many problems with the house when I saw her one year ago.  It was mostly empty and the upstairs (which had never been used) had only new bare walls from an extension that my landlord did after he inherited half of his grandfather’s home.  [The other half was given to his aunt and uncle, who . . . naturally . . . live next door to me now.]  The woman who lived here before me made a complete disaster of the home, leaving animals locked inside while she moved out to a new love, I understand.  The kitchen had been completely gutted when I saw the home.  Parts of the house reeked of cat urine.  I was not so sure that would be salvageable.

     He had not been ready to show the house, but because I was looking and we had mutual friends, I saw this house along with many others around Italy.  But I had not made any decisions.  He told me that by my return in October, the house would be ready for me to see it again.  I then went to the USA for four months last summer. I looked around the States, as well, in every place that I visited, desperate to find a place to call home and stop the loss of time from constantly having to move.

    While I was still in the US last September, I was told that I needed to get my stuff out of storage in Italy immediately. I was desperate to find a home and not have to move my things twice. I wanted to see if this place had improved.  Over the summer, the long searching had tired me and I decided that I would take one of the two homes that I saw in this village.  I had decided that this one would be the best for me as far as access [for stone carving] and my friends being neighbors.  However, my landlord had had a terrible summer caretaking for his wife until she passed, just about two weeks before I returned to Italy.  My friend was afraid to even ask him about showing the house.  And, naturally, not much in the house had changed in those four months.

     In the end, this dear man not only let me sign the contract, but he gave me a place to store my things across the mountain while he continued working on the house.  He found me a driver with a van that I hired to move everything.  For two months, I stayed living out of a suitcase in temporary quarters in Firenze.  I was waiting for a student who later cancelled the trip to Tuscany due to a serious injury. On December 3^rd, I moved into the house next door until my house was livable. This was wonderful.  I was amongst the trees and each day, I got to see what the workers were doing and even helped my landlord with various tasks and decisions.  It was a fun way to get to know someone and I began to be happy again.

2015 October 12 - for the love of Nature - view of studio

     I could see that he was getting tired and I felt that the approaching holidays were depressing him.  He just said that it was best that he keep busy.  So, we did.  I moved in after my Christmas guest returned to her home in Firenze.  So, here is an image of my main studio room on 29 December 2015.  My neighbors and my landlord gradually helped me to move my things from across the hill, even before I moved to the real house.  Each day, my future brightened and my heart soared. 

2015 December 29 - moving into new studio - Tuscany

      Just before Valentine’s Day, I had my first official and overnight house guest, a dear friend from Serbia.  It was cold and rainy most of the visit, but hey, I have a fireplace now, and so we snuggled up in front of a roaring fire, playing music videos on my laptop, dancing, singing along, drinking wine and together making quite a good meal. And the chocolate… with rum inside!

2016 February 12 - Enjoying a fire with a friend - new home!

     However, I still had no heating upstairs and told my landlord that I thought it might be more economical to buy a stove in the springtime. I was fine living on the bottom floor this first winter.  Italy often teaches foreigners a new sort of patience, but also, what sort of person would ask a grieving and hard-working man to add to the list of all he had done for me to also climb up high to cut a hole in a ceiling or a wall and all that?  In the middle of winter?  It could wait.  It has waited. 

     However, the temperatures are warming.  I have not used my upstairs studio room much yet since I am working on a mural and a sculpture commission now, had been to Firenze to teach that healed-up student for a month, and am still recuperating from two [same] knee injuries already this year (stupidity and a lack of grace are not good bedfellows).  And my sweet landlord and I still have a few things we want to do for the studio [going vertical!].  I hope my long-winded story did not bore you, but seriously, every single day I feel grateful. 

     And a nice “Pay It Forward” thing is that I get to spend my house anniversary today helping my foreign neighbors apply for their residency. What a process life is!

2015 April 28 - Art Studio with pond diagram on floor - sculpture commission

Peace,

Kelly

http://BorsheimArts.com

2015 April 28 - WIPs [works-in-progress] on the easels in new studio

Impatience with Stone Carving

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Hello again. If you have followed along much on these posts or my art newsletters, you may remember that I tend to work the whole piece of art “at once.” Not literally. What I really mean is that I try not to leave any part too far behind the development of the whole.

In my work on the marble “Gymnast” sculpture, it became time for me to remove some of the base. I know when it is time to remove some of the support when I can no longer envision carving away parts of the figure that I know must be removed because they start to look tiny in comparison to the part next to it. I wanted to shape her hips more, but the stone beneath her was just too overpowering. And also, as I worked the hips, I knew that I would want to start designing the way her hips connect with the shape I want to carve underneath them.


This first image shows the line on the left side of the marble base that I wish to cut off. Note that my wooden support and levelers are location outside of this mark. My first task is to move the supports inside of this line so that the stone will not fall over after I remove some of its bottom.

Since I want to keep the marble block that needs to get cut off, I need to take some extra care when splitting the stone. Normally, I would tip the sculpture on her side so that I could use my diamond blade to cut a “safety stop” into all sides before splitting. However, these days I am working alone without access to another human being when I want one. And if I tried to tip my heavy stone girl over alone, I would either hurt myself or hurt her. Neither is an acceptable option. Safety first.

Instead, I am trying to be patient as I drill deep holes into the stone on the three sides that I can access in order to guide the break once I am ready to make it. Some people think that the mere fact that I carve stone means that I am a patient person. That is a poor assumption. I think that we are all patient in some areas, and hardly at all in others.

My little neck of the woods, Cedar Creek, Texas, recently made the NBC national news for our unusually early drought situation. (The rest of the summer is bound to be another brutal one for our plants!) With the sun and heat we have now here, I have only been working a few hours in the mornings and again in the early evening before dusk on my marble. And not every day. And the drilling is going slowly.

I find myself getting impatient and wanting to just split the stone and hope that it breaks along the line I want. But, the only way that I have successfully convinced myself to settle down and do it right is to remind myself that the marble really will not care. No one (but you, I suppose) would actually know . . . and it would be up to me to redesign my intended sculpture. So, my impatience could cost me a lot of time. And the problem is totally avoidable. Finally, I am terrible company when I am angry with myself.


This second image was taken with my camera’s timer as I used the back end of the axe that I use to chop wood in the wintertime and a metal pipe to hammer the supports further into the stone. I scored the safety lines on the sides and began drilling holes after that. Thank you for following this journey… I wish you patience (when it is called for).