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Location: Blogs Artist Journal |
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| Posted by: Ken Hutchinson |
Monday, 19 March 2007 |
16th 3 07
Slow start to the day as we rise from our respective day after travel beds. Look around Graig and Fionas workshop which is extensive and marvel at the quality and diversity of work in the place, not to mention the fork lift and beautiful stone building that is the workshop and office space. Ive learned more in half hour just looking at this set up than bodging up my own place for years.
Such is the life of teaching yourself in isolation.
Drove to Cotton Tree Park via the freeway of the Sunshine coast. Its gangbusters here, with development , development, development. This place will be terrible in twenty years if not sooner. Lets not dwell on the negative.
The stone is amazing and not as hard as I thought, it seems a little softer that Carrara and more grainy, with a courser texture. Simona reckons it’s more like Greek Marble. I don’t know because I’ve never seen Greek Marble in the flesh only pictures in a book. Tomorrow we start, so tonight it’s a early to bed after some shopping and house keeping, breakfast materials and the like. Coffee coffee for the Italians, musli for me and eggs and Bacon for Fong.
Fong is the other Aussie, met him today and he seems like a great fella. He’s the sort of bloke you take an instant liking to. Lives about half an hour from here near Craig and Fiona, in fact they can see each others house from ridge to ridge. Simona is quick to laugh and a dark haired beauty, and I’m sharing with her and Luca when he gets here. Fiona only found out that Luca was coming from Tehran this morning. Emerats airline wouldn’t give out any details of passenger lists etc over the phone. Lucia didn’t respond with any emails to usor his wife. Visa problems seemed to plague him in Iran and they wouldn’t let him out of the country. All solved at 8.15 this morning when information was received that he was on the plain, you should have seen the change in Fiona’s body language when the news got through that he was in the country.
We are settled into the beach House in Maroochydore for the night. Luca will be here in the morning with Craig. Tired but excited, ready to go tomorrow.
17th 3 07 Starting Day
“We give what we have. The rest is just the madness of art.” Manning Clark paraphrasing Henry James 1967
I pencilled this in crayon on the north side of my stone this morning. Had most of it slashed off by the afternoon
Walked to the Symposium site along the esplanade, people seem pretty friendly, plenty of hello how are you, and hows it going, being offered from stranger’s. Helped Fiona set up the hoses power and shade. On the first day there is a lot of adjusting of services and the like. The stone just sits there brooding while all the activity goes on around the area.
Spent most of the day sawing the big stone with the quick cut saw. Making progress and lots of noise as well. There is a constant cloud of dust drifting across Cotton tree park toward the local restaurants and coffee shops.
Constant noise from the angle grinders and air compressors and hammers will drive the local shop owners crazy by the time we finish. This is modern sculpture in the rew. Warts and all, dust and all, noise and all, grit and all blood and all sweat and all. Stopped for coffee and a pie then lunch proper. Used wedges for the first time to gert rid of the waste material. The Process is as follows. Cut two parraelle lines as deep as you need, then sit the wedges in one cut line and hammer along the line, three or four wedges are needed for cuts that are 75 to 100 mm apart. Keep hammering until the piece falls out or splits off. The piece of marble between the cut lines breaks . Another couple of kilos gone. Graig makes the wedges from mild steel and hammers them flat. The wedges are around 150 mm in length and 50 wide. You can belt the hell out of them. Got quite a lot done today and went further than I expected. I’m working on the top side of the block as you expect, the figure is lying on its side. So I’m carving the left hand side of the figure if it were standing. Still only in the rough stage. Roughing out will take at least four days if not longer. Simona and Luca have started with Craig helping Luca . He’s a jovial character full of bad stories in his fairly good English: if you talk slowly he can understand you very well and tell as good a story as he gets. He reckons Iran is a great place, beautiful women at parties when behind closed doors. All else in public is very Islamic. But shut out the outside world and be private them just about anything goes.
The Catalogue from the Tehran Symposium is fantastic, full colour and produced every day as the symposium unfolded. He said there was snow on the blocks of stone one morning. Skying in the alps with people from all over the world. Sounds like Iran is a bit of a well kept secret!.
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