Foam to Stone

Hi Friends,

I am thrilled to introduce 'Moments of Sculpture', a newsletter where I will share my work and the thoughts behind it with you.

Currently, I am deeply engrossed in developing a practice of marble carving. My journey into marble sculpture began in April 2023 when I attended a private intensive workshop with an old-school Italian master carver. However, my fascination with this art form traces back to my childhood in Rome, where I grew up surrounded by the allure of Classical and Baroque art history.

I have actually been carving for almost a year now. Prior to working with marble, I was sculpting styrofoam for a large-scale commission on a private client's estate in Umbria. This project, called Ponder Peace, involved transforming massive blocks of styrofoam (a waste material from a recently erected concrete building) into a sculpture garden comprising ten large-scale styrofoam and fiberglass-clad sculptures (more on the sculpture garden).

Carving foam with hot wire tools is vastly different from carving stone with chisels, pneumatic hammers, and diamond saws. However, in both cases, the materials I choose to work with are offcuts or waste from industrial or architectural processes. So far, I have sourced Carrara marble from an Italian Marmista outside of Rome and Macael marble from the monumental quarries in Almería.

The surface finish of two of the sculptures in Ponder Peace incorporated 20kgs of Carrara marble dust—this was my first experience with marble. Now, I've returned to the dust and am covered in it every day as I work to remove material and reveal the marble form I have sketched out in my mind.

Marble carving doesn't produce any chemical waste like styrofoam carving or fiberglass casting, but it does generate a lot of dust. In fact, if I keep carving away, the entire block can gradually transform into a fine dust that blows away and returns to the earth.

During our time together, Umberto, the master marble carver, told me, "all marble is ancient". I often reflect on this anecdote because it astounds me to work with a material created tens of millions of years ago, long before humans even walked this planet.

I’m enjoying the stillness of marble; for millennia, it has been one form, and now, through a series of mark making, I’ve transformed it into another. It feels alchemical and high stakes. It makes me think about the world from a different altitude where my actions feel both personal and universal.

If you follow my work on Instagram, you've seen my mobile studio adventures. Over the past few months, I found myself in a nomadic phase and thus adapted my practice to fit my lifestyle. I worked under a walnut tree in Lake Como, in an orchard in the Valsugana valley, and under a fig tree in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Southern Spain. Each location was memorable, but after a period of roaming, I have resettled in Valencia and established a more permanent studio at Pluto, a cooperative art community based in a reclaimed industrial warehouse in an agricultural suburb of the city.

I'm currently working on two sculptures along with some other experiments that I will be sharing soon. But for now, I wanted to leave you with an image of my first independent marble sculpture (outside of the workshop) and the second piece I've completed in Carrara marble, titled The Dissolving Ego.

I also wanted to share the new season of my podcast Art Is… a podcast for artists, co-hosted with creative career coach Lauryn Hill. I was recently interviewed by art marketplace ART MO about Season 5 and my journey as a podcaster and emerging artist, you can read that write up here.

I appreciate being able to share my work with you and wish you all the best as we transition into autumn.

Warm wishes,

Isotta

isottapage

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