Handkerchief No. 4

Statuario Cervaiole marble

13 x 10 x 6.5 inches

2009

Handkerchief No. 1

Statuario Cervaiole marble

12 x 9 x 5.5 inches

2009  

T-Shirt No. 3

Statuario Venato marble 

17 x 14 x 3.5 inches

2009

T-shirt

Socks No. 1

StatuarioCervaiole marble

12 x 8 x 5 inches

2009

Mount Altissimo, also known as "Michelangelo's Mountain," in Pietrasanta, Italy, inspired this exhibition. Altissimo Statuario marble was used to create a collection of sculptures depicting interpretations of various fabrics in stone. T-shirts, handkerchiefs, pillowcases, and socks are meticulously arranged and then carved to depict both a landscape and a human history. The sculptures combine a contemporary aesthetic and sensibility for object making with a direct carving technique. The work reveals the stone's contrasting characteristics, such as hardness versus softness, weightlessness versus gravity, and temporality versus permanence. Mountains are discovered in handkerchiefs and undulating landscapes emerge from t-shirts through the interpretation and transformation of fabrics in stone, rendering the tangible ephemeral. The use of a mountain form as subject matter maintains the connection between the sculptures and the material's origins. Several of the sculptures, such as the t-shirts and socks, have Pop Art roots. These everyday objects are carved with a sense of irony and inspiration that also comments on the Italian drapery work seen in Neo-classical and Renaissance masterworks like Michelangelo's Pieta and Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Theresa. The exhibition's body of work serves as a modest yet contemporary continuation of one of art's oldest mediums –stone carving. The sculptures pay tribute to the legacy and traditions of Italian marble carving as well as the quarrymen of Altissimo.

Using Format