Dear Friends,

This summer I made five new sculptures. I shipped marble blocks to my studio in New York City from Tuscany, offcuts from the quarries of Carrara that I selected myself in June. Then I spent July and August busy carving marble and shaping metal.

I moved to New York in March, before then I was working outdoors in an olive grove in Fara Sabina, just north of Rome. Trading the olive trees for the city has been a fun challenge, and it took a few months to get everything running. But I've been building my world, bringing what I need from home to create new bold work. 

Over the next few weeks I'll introduce the new sculptures one at a time, however a list of available work with prices is attached at the bottom of the email. The pieces are available this season, ahead of the holidays. If one stays with you, reply to this email. I'm happy to share more images, talk through a piece, or arrange a studio visit.

For the past two years I've been obsessed with one thing: making marble light. I want it to feel like it's floating in mid-air, suspended, out of time. With this sculpture I think I got there.

Superposition is made of carved marble elements held in a steel structure. The title means two things.

In geology, superposition is the rule that the lower layer is older than the one above it. In physics, it is something existing in more than one state at once.

Carrara marble formed over 190 million years ago, in the Early Jurassic Period, when much of what is now Tuscany lay under a shallow tropical sea. The sea was teeming with early life, and when the shells and skeletons of marine organisms settled on the seafloor, layer on layer, they eventually hardened into pure limestone. Then, between 20 and 50 million years ago, the tectonic plates of Europe and Africa collided and pushed up the Apuan Alps. The limestone was buried deep, and heat and pressure recrystallised it into the dense, interlocking crystals of Carrara marble.

Superposition holds both meanings. It is a creature swimming in an ancient sea, it's a shell or a skeleton on the seafloor, and it's a mountain peak, all at once. It's an ancient material and a new sculpture, a hand-carved ruin. Superposition floats, suspended, existing in all of these states.

I also have some podcast news. This season of my podcast Art Is… is all about marble carving, and I recently interviewed my friend, the wonderful artist Auriea Harvey, about her foray into the stone. I was also a guest on The Capable Creative, where creative career coach Lauryn Hill and I talked about my artistic journey. Both episodes are linked below if you'd like a listen.

🎧 Building an Art Career in New York with Italian-American Sculptor Isotta Page
🎧 Working in Marble: A Conversation with Auriea Harvey & Isotta Page

Thanks for reading.

Warmly,
Isotta