Back in 1974 I spent a sabbatical year taking various types of art courses at the college where I first began my teaching career. The strongest pull on my interest was sculpture even though I had never built anything at all with my hands. I had always very much admired the works of Michelangelo. Over the year I ended up taking several sculpture classes and learned a great deal. In addition, I purchased and studied several books about the artist and his works. The most interesting from both an historical and personal point of view was Irving Stone’s The Agony and the Ecstasy.
After completing several smaller statues in plaster and clay, my teacher, Harriet Hughes, took me down to the stone quarry to pick out a stone for my introduction to sculpting in stone. She talked me into a beautiful pink alabaster piece which weighed over 100 pounds and cost $100. Being a rank beginner I would have preferred a sandstone rock, but she said: “If you are at all successful you will kick yourself for not working on a beautiful stone. “
I chose a picture of one of Michelangelo’s sketches to use as a model for my own clay piece, which I then had cast into a small bronze statue about one foot in height. The process of transforming my clay piece into bronze, by a professional
caster, was for a neophyte like myself a fascinating one in and of itself. So then, armed with my little bronze model I confronted this beautiful hunk of alabaster, lying there on the table, with fear and trembling. I was only going to copy the middle section of my small bronze, not the whole thing.
I had a few good tools and decided to work very slowly, turning the stone over whenever I did not know what to do next. The first day I must have turned the stone over a dozen times, really only staling until I saw something I could do. Each day I worked for several hours on my stone, inching my way around it with an eye on my little bronze statue. Ever so slowly I edged my way around, simply trying not to make a mistake.
Well, after a couple of weeks, it began to appear that this piece of alabaster was beginning to resemble my bronze model. My teacher was pleased, and every day offered encouragement and suggestions. She had seen me develop through several plaster sculptures and thus had some confidence that I knew what I was doing. My alabaster piece was beginning to take a real shape of its own. It was an exciting time for me, and I was gaining confidence. I could visualize the outcome.
When I returned to my home college the next fall, I gave a presentation about this great experiment to the whole college community showing this Michael Angelo piece and several of my other plaster pieces. My best friend, an art teacher himself, said to me afterwards, “You could make a living doing this.” I was pleased, of course to hear him say this, but a bit dumbfounded over the possibility that his statement could be true. I have continued my work as an amateur sculptor down through the years and have generally been pleased with the results.
Since that life-changing year, I have continued with my interest in sculpture, being attracted especially to the work of Henry Moore, much of which I have seen in England, and, of course, the work of Michelangelo himself. Indeed, it was with great excitement that I was able to see some of his works, especially his David, in Florence, Italy. I must say that this huge and marvelous piece of sculpture continues to amaze me.
Indeed, my wife Mari and I got to visit the town of Carrara on the west coast of Italy on one of our trips to Greece. There we saw the huge mountain and quarry from which Michelangelo took his stone, particularly his David. I even got to pick up a couple of small pieces of marble and have had some luck shaping one of them into a rather beautiful female figure. Fancifully, I like to think that the master himself might cast an approving eye on her.