Flaws and What is quality stone?

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

Dear Elle, thanks for the kind words,

I live within a stones throw of the mountains too, the first stone (marble)
that got me interested was really local, 20 minutes straight into the bush,
the next few also very local.

The only problem I had was getting too excited by a stone only to discover
that as hard as hell wouldn't take a chisel, this was quickly overcome by
taking any old file with me when I went stone hunting and if it worked
fairly well on anything that I was thinking of bringing home that clinched
it.

Overtime other problems came to the surface, stone from many of the
abandoned mines that I visited turned out have been blasted meaning that
there are hairline fractures in them, OK for small things but not for the
real big ones. I also sensed that the weather may have got into some of the
others, freezing water in tiny cracks can split the stone apart fairly
quickly!

I'm a total believer in local materials, in my case Australian, I've
broadened out a bit to include the whole country. There are a couple of
fabulous side effects from this, I give myself one hell of a buzz by knowing
that I make my art from the very ground that I live on and that every piece
of stone is a perfect record of something that actually took place as my
country was being formed. The other thing is that the poetic effect of the
place that I gather the stone from is never far away from me when I'm
working and therefore probably comes out in the sculpture.

Last but not least, if someone wrote a history of contemporary sculpture
based on the sociological or environmental circumstanstances of the artists
we are bound to see that more often than not that the sculptors who are
prominent are also the people who found bountiful supplies of very cheap or
even free materials.
Best regards
Clive Murray-White
Web: www.cowwarr.com