40 Women Sculptors for International Women's Day

As it's International Women's Day today, I thought it might be appropriate to post something about an exhibition celebrating the work of 40 women sculptors who have lived and worked in Pietrasanta during the last fifty years.

Whatever you think of gendered events, (and I know many of the women here are very ambivalent about them) it's difficult to turn down the opportunities that positive discrimination sometimes presents.   The work featured in this exhibition is extremely varied in style and subject matter and the sculptors come from almost every part of the world, including USA, Italy, Norway, Venezuela, Russia, Europe, and Japan.

They were all interesting, and I had my own personal preferences, but here are some that I found really interesting.  Sadly, one of my favourites, 'Dancing in the clouds' by American Shelley Robzen, can't be shown because it was highly polished black marble in a spotlighted situation which didn't photograph.  In fact, it was difficult to get any good photos at all, given that the church 'St Agostino' has no natural light.

My favourite artist of the older group,  Alicia Penalba (from Buenos Aires) died in 1982.  Her 'Trilogie'  - the three bronze figures standing at the entrance to the church, is really beautiful.

The gesso maquette for Grand Gisant reminded me of dinosaur vertebrae.

Again in the older group, the Italian Fiore de Henriquez who died in 2004, had a strange, almost feral bronze figure, full of quite violent life.  It's called 'Ippogrifo' - the Hippogriff.

I loved this small, alien landscape with its lonely figure by American Jill Watson who now lives near Pietrasanta.  It's called Giardino - garden.

This relief, by Swiss artist Maja Thommen, looks simple, but is incredibly intricate. She's a very interesting artist who paints, creates installations and also performs with a gypsy punk band.  It's called Donna Velata - veiled woman.

Dutch sculptor Margot Homan exhibited this bronze figure of a women holding her finger to her mouth - Il Silenzio.  It's very finely balanced.

There were some images that I found quite disturbing, including this male, almost zombie-like figure by young Italian artist Elena Bianchini.

Altogether a fascinating exhibition.  I'd have loved to do a creative writing workshop with it!

Walking in the Marble Mountains

Looking across to Mt Corchia

It's a bit of a ritual for us to go for a Christmas Day walk in the mountains, whatever the weather.  We've been out in hurricanes, monsoon rains, Lake District mizzle.  I've got a whole album of photographs taken cowering behind walls, under trees, almost invisible in thermo-fleece and Berghaus!  But this year the sun shone - bitterly cold at 4,500 feet, but clear, blue and sunny.

The marble quarries stop work at christmas, so it's a good opportunity to get up into the high mountains using the tracks they've built for the gigantic rock lorries without risking one's life.  This year we went up to the Henraux quarry on the highest flanks of Mt Altissimo, whose summit is getting lower year by year.  They are literally slicing it off.

Tough environmental call for a sculptor who loves working with the stuff, watching the environment be altered so drastically.  But it's not sculpture that's done this - a few blocks here and there for statues etc can be accommodated - no, it's the public appetite for bathroom tiles, fireplaces and table tops that's eating it away at this rate, helped by the ease with which it can now be quarried.  Once it took months to cut a marble block by hand;  now it takes minutes.  And you don't have to take it down to the town by buffalo sled (which took days).  A lorry can do the trip in half an hour.  How much of the mountain will be there when we walk back next year?  I suppose that depends on what happens to Italy's economy.  The machinery is idle at the moment.

Tomorrow we're off to an Italian town further south - Orvieto, near Perugia - for New Year.  It's the birthday of  jazz musician Stan Tracey and Neil (who used to run a jazz festival in England) has been invited to the party.  I'm really looking forward to seeing another part of Italy, as well as the music and the festivities.

Oh, and this year's Christmas picture?  Muffled up to the eyebrows for the sub-zero temps, but at least it wasn't raining!  Auguri and Buone Feste everyone!

Perched on the ledge of Altissimo, Mt Corchia in background

Sculpture by Candlelight

It’s the festive season in Pietrasanta - Christmas markets, parties, and exhibitions.  We’ve been to several lately - nothing big, just quiet celebrations of current work in artists’ studios and small spaces.  

Last night one of the bigger marble studios opened up for the people working there to show their work.   Not just some lovely pieces, lit by candlelight, but a chance to see the context - the rough drafts of WIP.    This is work by Swiss sculptor Rita Meier.

There are so many wonderful women sculptors working here.   At one of the local wine producers, another artist, Swedish Nigerian Italian Yemisi Wilson was showing her ‘Animalia’ - lovely drawings of primates and joyful marble carvings of elephant seals and rhinoceros’s.   There was the added bonus of being able to sample the local wine harvest at the same time!

One of the real treats last night was being able to go up into the loft of the Cervietti studio where they keep the plaster maquettes of all the sculptures that the artigiani used to be asked to copy.  It’s a ghost gallery of figures out of fairy tales  - a film set for a horror movie.   These are just some of the ones that caught my eye.

I could have wandered around this attic all night - there are probably a thousand stories up here!  

Autumn in Italy

So here I am again in the little house in the olive grove.  Despite the fact that it's the 1st December the weather is mild, with hazy sunshine - warm enough to eat lunch outside.  Coming straight from a northern British winter it seems strange to step back a season.  It's autumn here.   The chestnut trees are turning a lovely golden colour and the leaves are dropping. 

In the Pietrasanta Piazza they're putting up the Christmas tree.

And the Pri-mate is back from Cambodia, bringing a hammock in his luggage, which he's strung between the two trees on our terrace.  It will be lovely in the summer - but not too bad even now.  Just the thing for hanging about doing a bit of scribbling, though I might want it higher off the ground!

For me it's back to work - two guest blogs to write before Monday, the illustration permissions to sort out for the Japanese edition of Katherine Mansfield, and a proposal to write for the New Project - all will be revealed soon.

The Economic Crisis in Italy

Nothing illustrates the state of the Italian economy more clearly than the plight of the marble yards in Pietrasanta.  Once they were full of sculptors from all over the world and the skilled artisans helping them.  They worked alongside other artisans making commercial objects out of marble - fireplaces, statues for churches, floors, bathrooms - and it kept the town alive.  But over the past few years more and more marble yards have closed and there are fewer and fewer places for sculptors to work.  Recently the pace of change has accelerated.  Last September the yard Neil worked in had to close when the owner decided to sell the land for a block of flats.  He and a few other sculptors found a new studio in a beautiful location with good working conditions - it all seemed set to continue happily.  But the owner has been hit by the economic downturn during the summer - no one can afford fireplaces, or marble floors, garden statuary, and even the church is cutting back on renovations.  Yesterday, Friday, the sculptors were suddenly told that the space had been sold and they had until Sunday to remove their work.  Temporary space will be made for them on another part of the site, but it's been a big shock.

Packing Up

Ready to go

The newspapers are full of gossip stories about the private life of Silvio Berlusconi and rumours about his business dealings, but he remains the most powerful man in Italy, despite the fact that the country has one of the biggest national debts in Europe.   We are watching our Italian friends struggling to make a living and hope that Italy will survive.  The cartoon below is doing the rounds of the bars at the moment and really sums up the ordinary Italian's attitude to SB.    It's called 'the Trouser Salute'.

The Flowing Forms of Helaine Blumenfeld

Taking Risks

This is the latest exhibition in the Piazza at Pietrasanta and one of the nicest for a long while.  The work, in marble and bronze, is by a woman called Helaine Blumenfeld.  Do check out her site because her photos are much better than mine! Helaine is one of the older generation of sculptors working in Pietrasanta and very distinguished.  She originally studied in Paris under the Russian sculptor Zakhine and has built herself an international reputation. 

Helaine's personal studio

She’s based here, working in her own studio and in the marble studio SEM and specialises in exploring the territory between figurative and abstract forms.

These three bronzes I think of as three dancing women and I was amused to see some older Italian women out shopping and taking turns to pose for photographs beside them!

Pietrasanta is gradually getting back to its normal self after the tourist chaos of the summer.  One innovation is that the local police have adopted very strange two-wheeled vehicles to patrol on.  The Carabinieri of course, still dash around in cars!

Xmas in Italy

The tree in Pietrasanta Piazza

Xmas in Italy usually begins with a family meal on Xmas Eve.  Just being the two of us, we went out to a restaurant in Pietra Santa where we bumped into two friends and made a foursome over antipasto, primo, secondo and - being Xmas eve - a dolce as well!  They do wonderful chestnut cakes here, as well as hazelnut and chocolate tarts to die for.

The Piazza is decorated for Xmas, but no brightly coloured Santas and not a reindeer in sight - it's all very tasteful.




Pietrasanta Piazza at midnight

 Around ten o'clock, even in the pouring rain, the Piazza begins to fill up for the Grande Festa - every bar is serving hot punch, which is bright pink, smells like paraffin and has enough alcohol in it to fell a mule.

Ready for High Mass

Some people go to High Mass at 11.30pm, but not many.  I look in out of curiosity and a sense of tradition, but  - like many Italians - I don't stay.   The rituals and the music remind me of my childhood, even though I can't believe any more.

Having a quick cigarette before mass

On Xmas morning it's still raining and now blowing a gale too.  We have a quiet coffee beside the stove and then take the dogs down to the beach, where the Mediterranean is giving a good impression of the North Sea.

Frankie and Ellie

Then back to Peralta to huddle beside the stove again with a rather nice local wine - Vermentino from the Lunigiana (a small area just to the north of Tuscany).  Later I cook some Italian lamb with rosemary, garlic and red wine.  We ring the children in various parts of the world and then fall asleep in front of the TV, in the great English Xmas tradition.

Hope you all had a good Xmas too - comfortable, peaceful and neither flooded nor frozen!

The Feast of Santa Lucia

Yesterday was the feast of Santa Lucia. Around the mediterranean and in Scandinavia this is widely celebrated. We went to Pietrasanta to watch three friends making the traditional circuit of the town. You are supposed to stay awake all night on the 12th December (good excuse for all night parties) and the following morning just as dawn is breaking the women form a procession wearing crowns of candles on their heads, and they process again as darkness is falling in the evening. The song they sing - 'Santa Lucia' - is neopolitan but there are lots of Scandanavian variants. The candles symbolise the fire that refused to consume Santa Lucia in the Christian calandar, but it has much earlier pagan associations. It used to fall around the winter solstice before the calendar was changed in the 16th century. We don't celebrate Saint Lucy in England now, though John Donne wrote a wonderful poem about the feast, that connects its significance with the death of his wife. 'A Nocturnal upon St Lucy's Day'

'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's,

Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks ;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks

Send forth light squibs, no constant rays ;

The world's whole sap is sunk ;

The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,

Whither, as to the bed's-feet, life is shrunk,

Dead and interr'd ; yet all these seem to laugh,

Compared with me, who am their epitaph.

Study me then, you who shall lovers be

At the next world, that is, at the next spring ;

For I am every dead thing,

In whom Love wrought new alchemy.

For his art did express

A quintessence even from nothingness,

From dull privations, and lean emptiness ;

He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot

Of absence, darkness, death—things which are not.

All others, from all things, draw all that's good,

Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have ;

I, by Love's limbec, am the grave

Of all, that's nothing. Oft a flood

Have we two wept, and so

Drown'd the whole world, us two ; oft did we grow,

To be two chaoses, when we did show

Care to aught else ; and often absences

Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

But I am by her death—which word wrongs her—

Of the first nothing the elixir grown ;

Were I a man, that I were one

I needs must know ; I should prefer,

If I were any beast,

Some ends, some means ; yea plants, yea stones detest,

And love ; all, all some properties invest.

If I an ordinary nothing were,

As shadow, a light, and body must be here.

But I am none ; nor will my sun renew.

You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun

At this time to the Goat is run

To fetch new lust, and give it you,

Enjoy your summer all,

Since she enjoys her long night's festival.

Let me prepare towards her, and let me call

This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this

Both the year's and the day's deep midnight is.

Sun, Sea and Sand Sculpture

As you might anticipate, in Pietrasanta they don't build sandcastles at the beach, they do sand sculptures! And, of course, it's a competition. Neil was asked to take part, but couldn't fit it in this year because of a previous commitment, but we did go down during the afternoon to see what was going on. The beach at Pietrasanta Marina is an arc of volcanic Mediterranean sand with the marble mountains of the Alpe Apuane as a spectacular backdrop.







Near the edge of the sea, whole families were helping mothers and fathers to create works of art in the damp sand, just out of reach of the waves, to last as long as the tide allowed. One English sculptor had dug two long, diverging trenches which acted as an optical illusion when viewed through a hole in a piece of wood. Next to it there was a giant scarab beetle.



Further along a Polish/Danish bunch of grapes, a German abstract based on the internal structure of a shell, and an Italian sea-monster dragging its victim back into a hole.







Another abstract consisted of seven circles dug into an area of sand, which was patterned with a rake. A single set of child's footprints ran diagonally across - which looked good but was entirely accidental! One sculptor had dug down into the sand to create the interior of a basilica roof - very intricate and difficult.



It all looked great fun and I hope that next year I'll be there, bucket and spade in hand, as the sculptor's apprentice.

Pietrasanta and the Anti-art Movement

The small town of Pietrasanta (the name means sainted or blessed stone) has been at the heart of the marble industry in Italy for more than two thousand years. The five thousand foot mountains that surround the town have been chiselled away by centuries of intrepid quarrymen and from a distance you can see glaciers of glittering marble waste slithering down gullies towards the valley floor. On the precipitous roads, marble lorries thunder past like mobile earthquakes, leaving a drifting fog of white dust behind them.

You can still climb up to the quarry where Michael Angelo found the block from which he carved David. You can still see the old building where he may or may not have stayed while he was here. Pietrasanta lives off the sculpture industry and there are also several foundries where sculptors from all over the world come to get their work cast into bronze.


Henry Moore had much of his work cast here, as did Noguchi, and now Barry Flanagan, Kan, Bottero and Mitoraj all have work standing in the yards. The infamous statue of Saddam Hussein started out here too.

Residents of Pietrasanta are descended from generation after generation of artigiani, skilled at realising the work of others and turning plaster or terracotta maquettes into life-size works of art. The Anti-Art Movement, which began with Dada, wants to leave the traditions of the past behind and deconstruct all our notions of art. It too, is alive and well in Pietrasanta.


I’ve just been to the opening of an exhibition of Antonio Luchinelli’s work. He is one of those who can trace their ancestry back through the artigiani and he is best known for making moulds for the world-famous Kan. Antonio is a skilled mould-maker - meticulously reproducing whatever he’s given. This exhibition of his own work - a statement of his personal espousal of ‘Anti Art’ - is a series of pieces linked by a play on words, though I have to confess that I couldn’t engage with it at all, even when the linguistics were explained to me.

But then I’m on the side of art - with or without the capital letter - and I don’t believe it needs to be elitist - anyone can do it on any level, like writing. But I also believe that some people can do it better than others. I know I’m making a qualitative judgement when I say that; I know that everyone is entitled to read or look at whatever gives them pleasure, but - in my opinion - there is a lot of crap out there fetching huge sums of money. And there are an awful lot of people, in art and anti-art, who share the Emperor’s tailor.