(written July 25, 2014)
Today was the first day of workshops with Oscar making
Marmolinas. After a delicious lunch at Doña Nidia’s comprised of fresh salad,
fried chicken, rice, beans, tortillas, and fresh juice, we all walked over to
Oscar’s home where he also has his workshop. We started by making drawings of
the sculpture we each wanted to make. Oscar advised us to make simple designs
so that we would be able to finish them. Once we all had our designs we went
over to Oscar’s pile of Marmolina and he helped each of us pick a piece of
stone that he saw suitable for the design we each drew. For example, I drew a
small image of a woman sleeping, just her head and her arms wrapped around her
face in a gesture of peaceful slumber. Oscar found me a piece of Marmolina that
had a flat bottom for an appropriate base and a rounded top part to accommodate
the head and the arms wrapped around the face. The moment everyone had their
Marmolina and a seat, Oscar put us all to work. He handed us each machetes to
hack away any large areas of stone that needed to be removed in order to
achieve our desired forms. From that point, he and his studio mates walked
around helping and guiding each of us throughout the sculpting process. We
worked for about three hours, from 3 pm after lunch until 6 in the evening.
As a painter, I found it to be a challenge working three
dimensionally and thinking in the round. It was certainly interesting to take
to sculpting again though since I had not carved anything since we had a day
working with soapstone in 8th grade art class.
Watching Oscar hack away at the Marmolina, I started to get
the hang of the physical motions of carving away pieces of the stone. I
realized that it requires a great deal of force to carve, even for the fragile
areas of the sculpture that one would assume needed a softer touch.
Here is the final result of working on sculptures for 1-2 weeks in the studio.
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