He dragged me here and I went there in the morning and I thought, here everything is possible. To me it looked as if they were pulling the stone and it was the white marble. It was as if they were pulling the stone as if it was syrup, as if it was elastic, as if they could just swing it and push it and bend it. And I thought, this is much more than I've ever seen before. I had been working with stone before that in England and in Norway.
So I immediately fixed the date that I would come back a month later or something to work. I think I made an appointment to stay for one month or maybe two. And that just continued. And that is, what, thirteen years ago, fourteen years ago.
Hi. This is Sarah with another episode of Materially Speaking, where artists tell their stories through the materials they choose. Today, I'm talking to Norwegian artist Julia Vance, whose creative journey began in calligraphy. Always interested in the three-dimensional form of letters and words, Julia's work has been described as sculptural minimalist poetry. Her style is contemporary, but she often carves in the most classic of materials, marble.
I met with her twice before the pandemic. First, over a glass of wine where she told me about a commission for a new altar, font, and pulpit for a church in Norway which had burnt down. The church wanted to create something new which would connect to their worshipers in a very modern style. Julia also describes a piece she created with an offcut from the altar. Later, I met with her at her studios, Giorgio Angeli's in Querceta.
It was a sweltering dusty day, and in 40 degree heat, she was sitting inside an enormous black granite ring, perfecting a work called Passage to Knowledge, inspired by the letter Q. She was working flat out, as the deadline was fast approaching to ship it to its new home, a school playground in Norway. Can we start by you introducing yourself? So your name and where you were born?
Where I was born is really irrelevant because it was while my parents were moving around.
Okay. You don't have an attachment to that. Where do you consider that? Hamburg.
Really? Yeah. I have my mom's and my dad's nationality, but I feel Norwegian.
And what are your mom's and dad's nationalities?
Oh, sorry. He's American. My mom's Norwegian. Coming here, I'm one of many who has joint or treble or quadruple nationalities.
Really? Yeah. So where were you brought up then?
From the age of four, lived in Norway. And then I've been travelling since then because my family was split up. So I've always been swinging between airports and different traditions for Christmases and other holidays. I did have an artistic education, but I also was sailing for a year on a tall ship. I did printing.
I worked in an advertising company. I needed a job. Then I narrowed in on lettering and calligraphy. Eventually that took me into working in the surface of stone with inscriptions and then suddenly found I was working more and more into this surface of the stone. So I went beyond working relief work and then suddenly it was sculpture. And that's more fun.
When did that happen?
About fifteen years ago. Before that I was working in relief for many years.
In relief carving?
Mhmm.
What sort of things were you doing then?
I was working in slate and working with line traces of a brush or a pen. It could be also legible letter shapes. And then it just needed more strength or force. When I was working in relief on a surface, the line I was looking for, call it a line, the shape, I was carving that away from the surface. And at a certain point I started doing the opposite.
I kept what I had my attention on and I carved away everything around it and then it became freestanding. Before that I had travelled in Japan. I remember meeting a calligrapher, a master calligrapher. He was telling me without words really because he was speaking Japanese and I don't speak Japanese and he didn't speak English or Norwegian but he helped me understand how he was working on not just the line but the in between the lines was just as important. So I think this person really made an impression on me for several reasons.
Anyway, I ended up turning the focus or a little bit of keeping, keeping what I had the focus on and carving everything else away.
And what brought you to Pietrasanta? How did you first hear about Pietrasanta?
A beautiful friend started saying to me, 'Ah, there's a place in Italy which is called 'Tata Tata Tata' and I never got what the name was. And this was sort of before I had understood that you could look things up on the internet. And he said, you must go there. You would love it.' And I thought, 'Yeah, yeah, this is what all the older people say.' And in the end he dragged me here. He was making a documentary about a Norwegian older sculptor called Knut Steen.
He dragged me here. He was going to film this old sculptor in the studio. And I went there in the morning and I thought, wow, Here everything is possible. And to me it looked as if they were pulling the stone and it was the white marble. It was as if they were pulling the stone as if it was syrup, as if it was elastic, as if they could just swing it and push it and bend it.
And I thought, this is much more than I've ever seen before. You know, I had been working with stone before that in England and in Norway. And so I immediately fixed the date that I would come back a month later or something to work. And just for I think I made an appointment to stay for one month or maybe two. And that just continued. And that is, what, thirteen years ago, fourteen years ago.
How did you learn the skills?
I started learning to work in stone from a letter carver in England, Tom Perkins, who lives up near Cambridge. I stayed with him and his wife, Gaynor Ruff. It was a sort of exchange. I looked after a dog and I picked up some kids from school and in exchange I was learning how to carve. And then I went back to Norway and I was doing some carving there.
I've not really gone to a school but always, you know, if you're standing next to skilled people and you watch how they are doing, I've met beautiful people on the way who have, you know, maybe seen that I'm hungry to learn so they've lent me their tools or shown me some techniques. Sometimes now I see that I meet somebody who maybe has that same hunger, so it's my turn to show some others in between how to do.
Did you start working in marble when you came here or did you continue in other stone?
Yes, when I came here I started working in marble. Before that had well, funnily enough I'd worked also in Italian slate. Various types of slate: Norwegian, English, Italian. I'd worked in soapstone. I think I'd worked in granite. In Norway that's the main material really, granite. And then coming here to Italy, the most easy material to get hold of is marble. It's really what it's all about.
What's your favourite?
It changes, it changes. Just now I'm working on some granite and I'm suddenly falling in fresh love. Can you say that? Falling in love again? The project I'm working on just now is a commission for a school in Norway.
It started, I think two years ago. But the first year is just to get a contract fixed on paper and signed, which is important when you're working on your own to have all the agreements safely noted down. They really wanted me to use some Norwegian local stone, and then I eventually found out they didn't really even know the name of the local stone themselves. And I found out that I would do the commission down here in Italy again. And for me it was actually better to not bring Norwegian stone down to Italy and then back to Norway again, but to find some granite down here in Italy.
It does turn out that it's Brazilian granite, which I will then bring to Norway to warm up the little place called Fleursberg. I think that will work out really well.
The school commission. Can you describe it in words?
The title is Passage to Knowledge. So for me, what is a school? A place where you mature, a little person will grow emotionally and mentally and physically. And so this is like a big circle and through this circle is a wave. And a small kid will be able to stand inside the circle on top of this wave.
You can also see it as the letter Q, a huge letter. So a circle with a tail. I work with letter shapes, not always. So this is both a portal, something you can go through and I know with our bodies, I mean any hole opening, it attracts us. You want to put your arm through or try to see if you can fit your body through it.
To walk through stone is also kind of magical. And then this, also resembling the letter Q which can be an abbreviation for the question and in connection with the school I find the question being the most important. Not all the answers. You can drown if somebody gives you all the answers, but the openness, the curiosity, the wandering, the fumbling around to find out, that's important.
So it'll be like a question in the schoolyard?
Yeah, it will be in front of the entrance, the main entrance to the school. And on Wednesday next week they will start making the concrete foundation. They wanted me to come and check whether the foundation was done correctly, but I'm busy. I have to finish the thing here. So I think they'll just have to make do with all the drawings I've sent them.
What other commissions have you done in the last few years that you're proud of?
A church in Norway burnt down, and they were wondering whether to make a copy of the old church, which was a wooden traditional building, or go totally modern. And they did. And with a very good architect company they finally decided to make a very modern new building. It's a curved roof. It looks in profile like a ski jump.
The input I got I initially got into the job because I was going to make the artwork of the floor and then they needed somebody to also do the altar and the pulpit and the font. They asked me if I could do this also. And I saw the drawings of the architects. The church wasn't ready yet and I just saw this beautiful curve on the roof and I thought, okay, alright, that's my key. And at the same time I was thinking, I've seen a lot of altars which look like big heavy boxes.
For me this room where people are thinking, having their belief I don't believe in particular religion myself but I am thinking and I have respect for the strongest thoughts we have. In that room it should be space and openness for all the thoughts. So the shape of the altar had to in some way convey openness. And so I ended up making it as a well all these three elements the altar, the font and the pulpit they are linked together in that they resemble as if you take three brush strokes in the air and then you freeze them. And so the altar is like a curve.
You see through it, so the table, the surface for the priest to put the candles or whatever on top, and then it goes down on the side and it curves, and then it comes back again on the bottom. So you see through the table onto the priest behind it and the table part is hanging in mid air, in a way. And the priest's first reaction when he saw the little model was, Oh no, the congregation, they can see my legs! And then the art consultant, she said, No, no, no, it's okay because you're wearing the religious clothes, so it's not you they're seeing, they are seeing the priests. Today he's very happy with the altar, all the priests there.
I even got a picture the other day where they had some young kids who were lying inside the altar with their little mobile phones, having a little break. But that was very exciting to make something which is going to be there for a very long time and it's going to be the focus of people's eyes for so many hours. So it had to also be clean, be strong, not distract, convey the openness. And then this curvy shape is repeated in all the three elements.
Yeah. It's interesting because so much of the older marble work here was for churches. But I haven't heard other people talk about doing modern work for churches.
Yeah, well, it's probably as close as I will get to doing religious work.
You're working on a piece which was an offcut. I'm not sure if it was from the altar or from something else, but it looks different depths or widths from each end.
For me at least, I find it interesting when approaching a sculpture, if is of such a size that I can walk around it, that I am drawn to the other side of it, that I need to look at it from different angles. Because if I can get all the information from one side, I don't have to move. And then in one way it might just as well be a painting or a photograph or a drawing. It doesn't have to be a surprise on the other side, but it can't be a total different language on the other side. It has to hang together if it's one piece, at least for me.
The piece which we initially cut out of the inside of the altar, that material became the font. The font where the baby has the water on its head and all of that. So the font was sort of born from the altar. But the block was a little bit too big still. The slab which we cut off was 25 centimeters thick and that's what I made this tall sculpture of.
In a way I'm using perspective. Seeing it from one side it also has a boldness, it looks wide, big, fat. And then when you walk around it, then you understand that it is only very narrow, it's only 25 centimeters, which is nothing. So it kind of kids the eye in a way. And I also just try to take away all unnecessary clean up.
It's very beautiful. And what's next?
Then when this commission is done within the next month, my brain is free to start working on the commission. No, sorry, exhibition. It sounds the same. That will be a solo show I have up in Norway next year. And there will be some metal pieces, quartz and steel, and also some, well, marble and also some alabaster pieces. I haven't got it all sorted out yet. But it's a lot of time. Well, it's not a lot of time.
It's plenty of time. So have you got artists who you consider your influences? People either living or dead that you
Oh, there are a lot of fantastic artists. There's a Norwegian sculptor artist called Nils Aas who for me was one of the first magicians I got to know about in the way that he could in any material make something fantastic. If it was a steel thread or a piece of paper, just a block of wood. For me it means also a lot to see the work of strong female artists, but not just because they're female. When I see the work of Barbara Hepworth, it just feels good to see.
I remember sitting in one museum once watching one of her pieces and it felt a little bit as if I could see her thinking how she had been thinking when she'd been working, even though, I mean, she died a long time ago. Coming here to Italy, I really started understanding, oh, I'm just, you know, I'm one of many. Understanding that a lot of other people have made before me And in a way, we're like a chain of beads, one after the other. Somebody's been doing before me and I'm doing now, and somebody's going to be doing after me again. I've been told that there used to be something like 60 little stone carving studios down in the center of Pietrasanta and you would hear whistling and the from the chisels because it was before you had music in your ears and an angle grinder.
Okay, I use pneumatic tools, I use electric tools, I've also used robots. Now when I'm working on bigger pieces, I'm realising if I was to do all this by myself, it would be quite limited how many pieces I would be able to do. And so I get help in roughing out. And I've had people people, real people, rough out for me. And I've also used robots to rough out for me.
It's quite different, but in a way it's doing the same job. I have to learn to work together with both. There are challenges with both and advantages with both.
Well, it's been a long big job, but two weeks left. And then it has to be finished because I'm going home to Oslo for the summer. So just some final details and mounting it together in just over a week's time, just to make sure that the pieces fit together. We haven't tried it yet. It will fit. And then wrap it up and put it in big crates and on the truck to Norway.
So how long does the packaging process take?
Piero will come and and take measurements for the boxes on Saturday, and he makes them in his studio. So he just arrives with brilliant finished crates and we put them in. It takes with this half a day to put it in boxes.
So you're sitting inside the circle which is the the o and behind you is the little bit that's the Q.
Yeah. Well, it's that bit that bit. This bit here
What is this?
It's in two it's in two pieces. The the wave which goes through the circle. Yeah. When I'm sitting inside here, it's easier to get to these surfaces.
You're in the shade, but it is like 40 degrees today, isn't it?
Yes. Yes. So I'm not doing much else than this. I'm not planning my taxes or anything else, serious thought wise.
Yeah.
No, it's okay. It's okay.
Yeah. Do you sign your pieces, Julia, or not?
Oh, God. I forgot that. Oh, sorry.
Do you put your name or do you have an icon or something?
I put J Vance because if I just put J V, nobody's gonna know who J V is. There are many J V's. But Jay Vance, then people can find me if they want and the year. And I do that because I like to see that on pieces, whether it's sculpture or drawing or films or music. I mean, I'm interested to know who's done things, who's made it. And I think it's important that we do put our name on it.
And do you do some sort of send off or any of this time? Do you have like a drink and show your friends in peace?
Yeah, yeah. We're gonna do a small drink here probably over there in the olive garden like I did last time with the big pieces before I sent them off. And a friend is actually checking with a harpist. Maybe I'll have some nice music, a little bit to eat. And it's it means a lot to me to get the chance to show what I'm working on to my colleagues here. They are important to me. The choir here, the old guys, the old artigiani of
Apezzano Monte, Coro Versilia. They are thinking of coming up and singing up in Skien in the Norwegian town when I have my opening. It's quite amazing. So I'll get some marble from here and I'll get some fantastic older guys up for singing. Versilia, and I know them quite well and I've done some translation for them and I feel kind of adopted by them. And they have a twin town with Sheeran where I'm doing the exhibition.
So they already have a connection. And then when they heard that I'm doing an exhibition there, they wanna come up again and do a concert. So I'm sort of moving Italy to Norway. I'll be October in a little bit over a year.
During the pandemic, Julia has been working and exhibiting in Oslo, but she returned to Pietrasanta as travel restrictions ease to start on her newest commissions. So thanks to Julia Vance. You can see her work on her Instagram @JuliaVance one or on her website juliavance.no. And thanks to you for listening. As with all episodes, you can find photographs of the work discussed on our website, materiallyspeaking.com or on Instagram.
If you're enjoying materially speaking, subscribe to our newsletter via our website so we can let you know when the next episode goes live. And if you feel moved, please leave a rating or review on your favourite podcast platform.