Ethics of flawed stone

["Clive Murray-White" <clivemw@zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz>]

Hi all, and Tim especially,

I make figurative sculpture and according to some ancient set of values
every piece of marble that I use would be classed as flawed, of course I
don't see it that way at all.

Just by way of background I tend to take my inspiration from the damaged
relics of what I call my culture, the ancient Greek and Romans, I do not try
to imagine the sculptures as they might have been on the day they were
installed but get very excited by the way they are now. Damaged, eroded,
vandalised and displayed completely out of context.

You only have to go to the British Museum or similar to see that many people
feel the same way.

When I tell people that all the marble that I use would have been rejected
for sculpture in the past because its too colourful or has too many markings
in it they always say they like my stone better because "imperfections are
truth".

I couldn't use the so called best quality pure white Italian marble for the
simple reason that according to my values such an ideal is essentially a
lie.

In these sorts of discussions I'm always reminded of the statement "a weed
is only a plant that is thought to be in the wrong place".

I have found that once you get past the colour and fault issue then you
suddenly realise that just about every so called  stone carving "rule" can
be disregarded.

When I first started out I felt that everything had to be "finished",
according to some mythic set of values. This often worried me because the
sculpture often felt more honest and far less slick one and half stages
earlier, for some reason I felt compelled to eliminate every bruise mark
because it was an indication of poor craftsmanship, sure you can have marks
in really wrong places which have to be removed but in general I reckon its
a great liberator if you can actually look at all the marks that your tools
make + all the so called imperfections in the stone as very handy potential
aids to your own expression.

Black marble: I use black from Chillagoe North Queensland, Australia
supplied by Cairns marble. a fairly close-up example can be seen on the home
page of my web site.

Regards to all
Clive Murray-White
Web: www.cowwarr.com