A couple of days after having posted “Physical to Digital” (part 01) I realized that I had forgotten to include several fragments of my life. One large time gap concerns a series of sculptures made between late 1985 and early 1987.
In September of 1985 “Open Sea” had been installed and my life on several levels was changing. In February we celebrated the birth of our first daughter, Beatrice, and now after the sculpture installation in September I had the luxury of time.
Pietrasanta was still basically a sculptor’s town and a wonderful place to work and to live. There was a strong component of skilled artisans covering any aspect of the art, from marble carving, casting bronze, creating Venetian mosaics, making enlargements of models, moulds of these models, the crates to ship them. Then added to the mix was a great band of artists from different countries and various ages. Strong friendships were created between the artisans and the artists. Though an outsider you felt to be a part of the town.
Then as a bonus the world’s two best producers of sculpting tools at that time were to be found less than two hours from town. One was in a beautiful mountain setting where to reach the factory you walked through this ancient town and then on a narrow path through woods. As you drew near ones ears heard the sound of many hammers at work. They built some very useful tools that i designed for myself.
The next 14 months were dedicated to the creation of a new series of sculptures. The sculptures I wanted to create were too big for my studio in town. Claudio Mariani, the foundries owner, kindly let me develop my ideas in the same foundry studio I had used to create the head and tail of “Open Sea”. The springing point for the sculptures was to be the figurative part of the “Files” sculpture, shown below, that I had created for my solo 1983 exhibition at the Canadian Cultural Center in Rome.