what type of stone to carve/artisti

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

Hi all,

I should have prefaced my previous comments with "I'm talking about marble"
for exactly the same reasons as Artisti so eloquently stated.

Although I don't use Italian marble my story is the same, its the
transparency and the way that it soaks up light that really attracts me.
I'll go a little further, you have to wonder why people are so universally
attracted to marble, what is it in our collective psyches that makes for
that enormous emotional attachment to one type of stone over all others.

In my case it just seems to be the "ideal" material, not to too hard, not
too soft, will take surfaces that can reduce people to tears and most
strangely of all it actually invites the chisel. One of the most profound
discoveries I ever had was when I worked on my first piece of statuario
because again it invited me to carve freehand curves so much so that it had
me wondering if much of the look of Western Art (hair, drapery etc,) was not
artistic vision but the result the marble beckoning the artist.

On artisti's comments about selling, I can't agree, the very commonly held
myth that says its "who you know" is completely wrong because you get know
people (those kinds of people) only by what you do. Re: having money to
start with any artist with obvious amounts of money upset their colleagues
quite a bit, the real people who help the chances of another artist "making
it" are the other artists. Artists are actually the most powerful element in
the food chain. It also best if the artist doesn't do the selling.

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