10 . 21

sculptor’s dust : october ‘21

Josh writes, “The story of marble begins hundreds of millions of years ago with the accumulation of the shells and skeletons of deceased sea creatures on the bottom of the ocean floor.  As more and more material was deposited on top the remains were compressed and turned into beds of limestone.  Even more pressure and heat caused that stone to undergo a process of metamorphosis into a new type of stone whose crystal faces sparkle and send light dancing in all directions: marble. This desirable building and art material exists in large quantities of high quality through the mountains of Vermont and western Massachusetts and has been extensively quarried.  More than 200 years of quarrying has left industrial scars on the face of the earth.  Those seeking marble created deep pits and gashes in the ground and left mountains of scrap stone that did not meet the quarry’s standards. These piles are my favorite places to search for stone that has incredible character and variations that I can collaborate with. I chisel, grind, file, and sand these fragments of marble to create the forms of my sculptures.  These processes create dust that I must collect in order to avoid breathing it in. I am so excited to find a way that this material can be used to enable further creative endeavors and to add a further level of reuse to this wondrous product of our earth.”

contributors : Marjorie Morgan and Joshua Ruder

MARJORIE MORGAN has been a creative soul throughout her life, engaging deeply with both performance and visual art forms. She studied dance at Oberlin College, and then spent over 25 years dancing professionally and creating critically-acclaimed dances and performance art to be performed by others and herself. She has always sought out artistic challenges, and especially enjoys the creative spark resulting from collaboration, working with artists in the fields of video, sound design, contemporary and classical music, printmaking, sculpture, assemblage, painting and printmaking. Since relocating to Western Massachusetts from the Boston area, Marjorie has focused on painting and printmaking. Two years ago, she decided to clear her studio out of all commercially made materials and dedicate those years to working with natural materials.  In this time, she pioneered a method for creating monotypes with natural ink, and happily collaborated with hundreds of plants and minerals.

JOSHUA RUDER is a figurative sculptor, based in Western Massachusetts, working mostly in carved stone and welded steel. His journey as an artist has been a process of constantly exploring both the possibilities and limitations of different materials — steel, stone, ceramics, plaster, wood, and glass — and of combining them in different ways.  He creates sculptures using stone and metal that are considered scrap, looking beyond their dirty and cracked facades to imagine the beauty contained within, and then working to bring that out.  He was introduced to stone carving at the Carving Studio and Sculpture Center in West Rutland Vermont.  There, surrounded by the remnants of a massive industrial landscape that nature has been able to creep back into and reclaim, is where he fell in love with marble.  He finds himself continually returning to these quarry spaces as sources of inspiration, reflection, and amazing stones to collaborate with.