See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com on form is an exhibition of sculptures in stone held every other summer at Asthall Manor, Oxfordshire. Discover what goes on during its installation. Creative director, Rosie Pearson tells us about the finials by Anthony Turner on her gateposts which she commissioned in 2000, and how these sowed the seeds for creating on form. We hear from the curator, Anna Greenacre, about how she and Rosie choose artists through studio visits, then work alon...
Jun 15, 2022•46 min•Ep. 34
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com From a very young age Flavia drew and painted. She was always asking everyone around her for paper and colours because drawing was her language and her refuge. It was her way of processing everything that happened to her, much as some people use writing. Flavia is inspired by her childhood and her work often ends up being self-portraits. Even if she tries to invent different characters behind her pieces, they always end up being her. Flavia is...
Dec 20, 2021•20 min•Ep. 33
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com 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 intr...
Dec 15, 2021•27 min•Ep. 32
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com 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, whi...
Oct 27, 2021•16 min•Ep. 31
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com 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 questi...
Oct 20, 2021•28 min•Ep. 30
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com 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 h...
Jul 14, 2021•23 min•Ep. 29
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com 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 tau...
Jul 07, 2021•24 min•Ep. 28
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com 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’...
Jun 30, 2021•23 min•Ep. 27
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com 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 he...
Jun 23, 2021•32 min•Ep. 26
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com 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 h...
Jun 16, 2021•36 min•Ep. 25
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com 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,...
Jun 09, 2021•32 min•Ep. 24
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com 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 p...
Jun 02, 2021•27 min•Ep. 23
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Born in Soissons, France, Emmanuel went to trade school at the age of 16 to learn how to renovate historical monuments by hand, specialising in granite. He spent some years restoring churches, cathedrals and monuments all over France until he felt the calling to create his own work as an artist. He says women and the female form are a constant source of inspiration. Dance is a strong theme in his work and began with a homage he did for Martha ...
May 26, 2021•42 min•Ep. 22
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Lucy Dickens is an artist and illustrator, whose works exudes humour. Close friends since the age of three, Lucy and Sarah ramble and percolate over Lucy’s upcoming show. As a great, great granddaughter of writer Charles Dickens, writing plays an important part in Lucy’s life. Her paintings often have a narrative quality, leaving you wondering what went before, or what will happen next. As well as humour, her recent work contains a lot of vibr...
May 19, 2021•36 min•Ep. 21
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Welcome back to a second series of Materially Speaking – where artists and artisans tell us their stories through the materials they choose. In these snapshot stories, they tell us about their journey to become an artist, and the inspirations for their work. Along the way, they explain why they have chosen different materials to work with at different stages of their careers....
May 14, 2021•3 min•Ep. 20
Materially Speaking began with interviews from artists and artisans working near Pietrasanta in northern Italy, where generations of artists have come since Michelangelo first arrived over 500 years ago to source marble for his Pietà . We are taking a break for the summer but we have already started recording new interviews and look forward to sharing more artists’ stories later this year. We will continue our conversations with artists who work, or have worked, around the area of Pietrasanta an...
Aug 28, 2020•2 min•Ep. 19
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Sollai Cartwright takes inspiration from everything around him creating both abstract and figurative work. Sollai talks about his favourite stone, Bianco P, and how it responds to chisels while holding its form. He speaks about the historical resources of the area around Pietrasanta and of the extensive range of historical tools available, especially at the renowned Milani Tools shop. He describes how each tool has a different relationship wit...
Jul 31, 2020•24 min•Ep. 18
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Born into an artistic family in Australia, Jacob has been living in Italy, on and off, since he was two-years-old. He began his musical training very young and brings these sensibilities to his art. All the music in this episode was composed by Jacob . The Embrace series was inspired by a hug Jacob’s wife Jacqueline gave him. He explains that when his wife gave him a hug he saw a certain form. This form became a piece and this piece then devel...
Jul 14, 2020•26 min•Ep. 17
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Christian Lange apprenticed as a chiseller in Freiburg, Germany, and started out as a stonemason restoring churches before coming to Pietrasanta to try his luck as an artist. Then he fell in love and his work took a slightly different direction. He decided to build his career as an artisan and now creates ornamental pieces and sacred art, as well as collaborating with artists to realise their visions in marble. He talks about the responsibilit...
Jul 01, 2020•21 min•Ep. 16
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Rita Meier learned the direct carving technique from artisans and the international community of artists in the studios around Pietrasanta. In this episode she talks about the grades of hardness of various stones and describes the process of carving. Inspired by organic shapes, Rita discusses her seed pods series which she sees as the carriers and protectors of future lives, always perfectly adapted to survive in their environment. Rita descri...
Jun 17, 2020•23 min•Ep. 15
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Californian artist Neal Barab says his work is variously influenced by Mexican pre-Colombian art, art from the Cyclades, African art, Japanese anime such as My Neighbor Totoro by Hayao Miyazaki and cartoons. Recently he’s been working on a series of ‘personaggi’, or characters – human and animal – carved from multicoloured stones, some painted. Neal says ‘I’m wanting my pieces to be not just sculptures but living creatures.’ Their personalitie...
Jun 05, 2020•33 min•Ep. 14
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com When Almuth Tebbenhoff came to London in the late 1960s she started from scratch: learning a new language, finding a job and studying to be a potter. A decade later, a lucky meeting with Eduardo Paolozzi gave her the chance to study at the Royal College of Art where drawing classes, lectures and conversations with other artists led her from the world of ceramics to a wider range of materials. Almuth first came to Pietrasanta to work in marble ...
May 20, 2020•20 min•Ep. 13
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com After what he describes as a ‘very free’ art education, Australian-born Michael Francis Cartwright first came to Carrara in Italy 35 years ago with his wife Shona Nunan . Michael says ‘the main thing in my life is about creating something the whole time’ and discusses the many mediums he employs. Michael likes drawing, painting, printmaking, working with beautiful red hardwoods and carving marble. He also works with found objects, often discar...
May 06, 2020•23 min•Ep. 12
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Liverpudlian Martin Foot always loved learning and since childhood dreamt of carving in stone. At the age of 13 he worked weekends for his uncle, a stone mason. At 19 he took a one-way ticket to Australia to try his luck and found himself carving in the company of Italians, who spoke of home. This sowed the seeds in Martin’s mind of some day working there himself. In 1996 he finally came to Italy, arriving in Pietrasanta at the end of a golden...
Apr 29, 2020•24 min•Ep. 11
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Shona Nunan and her husband, Michael Francis Cartwright, left Australia for Italy to tell the world, and themselves, that they were committed to being artists. They arrived in Carrara, near the white marble mountains 35 years ago, without even enough money to eat the workers’ lunches. She tells her story, from peering longingly into the bronze foundries of Pietrasanta to finally realising her dreams. During Shona’s career, recurring themes hav...
Apr 22, 2020•23 min•Ep. 10
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Eilis O’Connell studied at art school in Cork, Ireland in the early 1970s. She was fascinated by making something small and then realising it big. Here she shares with us the amazing range of the materials she’s worked with and her new-found admiration for marble. Eilis says ‘I just love experimenting, as a natural thing. I’m a real messer. I like to see what a material can do and play with it.’ She touches upon a wide variety of subjects in t...
Apr 15, 2020•22 min•Ep. 9
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Canadian Douglas Robinson arrived in Pietrasanta in 1979 to learn from the artisans. He worked with Jørgen Sørensen and took to stone as his main medium for expression. He explains how the support network for the marble industry makes the area unique for artists to work in. He talks about the enormous range of stone available there and why the artists are particularly drawn to work with the famous white marble of Carrara. He recommends the cem...
Apr 08, 2020•27 min•Ep. 8
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Eppe de Haan was born in Arnhem, Holland and studied art at the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague. Originally a painter, he came to Pietrasanta to try his hand at carving marble in 1995. There he started carving in a studio in Querceta before joining SEM Studios where the artisans shared their skills and experience. As a figurative painter his work followed a similar theme as he moved to carving in marble and he specialises in the nude figure ...
Apr 01, 2020•23 min•Ep. 7
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Jim Hager, from California, has been carving marble in Pietrasanta, Northern Italy, for almost 30 years. He talks to us about his Sculpture for Homeless Project where he has captured the images and voices of the homeless in his home town of Oakland, California, and is creating an exhibition which will feature a cardboard “House of Cards” carved from one block of marble. He speaks of his inspiration, and how he hopes his art can be a vehicle fo...
Mar 25, 2020•23 min•Ep. 6
See pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Stephan Hamel – a brand catalyst who divides his time between Milan, Vienna and Pietrasanta – tells the story of his Italian grandfather laying marble in palaces in India in the years both before and after Independence from the British. Stephan reflects on the many ways in which marble has represented power over the generations, and observes that the artists may not always support the politics involved. He ponders on the number of dictators wh...
Mar 18, 2020•22 min•Ep. 5
