Drawn from stone | The Examiner | September 12,2023
Artist Anita Denholm talks to Declan Durant about process and inspiration. Video Rod Thompson
Transcript
00:00 Yeah, so these two pieces actually came out of one long piece of marble cut in half and
00:14 then basically you start drawing on it and where I want to take pieces away from.
00:21 So to actually visualise a square thing going into being 3D like that is a bit difficult.
00:29 So I finally figured out that you use a maquette.
00:33 So make like a sketch of what you want to do and then just sit it in front of the block
00:39 and do sight lines onto it and then just start carving it away with angle grinders and things.
00:48 If I'd used chisels it's a lot more time consuming to use chisels and rasps, that's a traditional
00:57 way of doing it, but I just like using power tools because I can get the material away
01:04 very quickly.
01:06 I get bored easily.
01:07 So I like to see things happen quickly and then at the end of the process, this is almost
01:15 done, but I use sandpapers, various wet and dry paper to get all the marks out.
01:24 Yes, I could say I'm a traditionalist but this is a modern world and yeah, so that's
01:31 how I go about it.
01:32 So how long would it normally take to do a piece like that?
01:36 Well, there's three answers to that.
01:39 A hundred million years for the piece of stone to be formed.
01:44 My age, 59 years.
01:47 This is some total of my life's work to this point, is this piece.
01:53 Or I could tell you it would be about 30 hours.
01:57 A lot of sanding, yeah.
01:59 So I lose my fingertips and I start to get very short, thin nails because it's, yes I
02:07 use a lot of mechanical bits to get to a point, but then the actual finishing is really part
02:12 of me.
02:13 And I will leave some areas that are, you can actually see the maker's marks, where
02:19 I've actually worked it, because I think that's important.
02:22 In my work is, with my big piece down the east coast, if you go around to one side you
02:29 can actually see the drill marks where the piece of stone was taken out of the quarry.
02:36 And my current pieces I'm working on at the moment, very much that drill marks are part
02:41 of it, but it's the face form coming out.
02:46 And that all comes from going to Italy about 10 years ago and going to the Accademia in
02:52 Florence where Michelangelo's David is the centrepiece of this particular gallery.
02:58 But when I walked in I looked at the David and went wow that's amazing, but my eyes were
03:02 drawn to some companion pieces in the gallery running up and they're the unfinished works,
03:08 they're called the Captives and Michelangelo never finished them.
03:12 And you can actually go up to them and you can see the maker's marks, you can see the
03:16 chisel marks, and for me that was like, oh.
03:19 (gasps)