The Creation of my Soapstone Carving “GAIA”
The Creation of Gaia.
It was pouring rain and I was soaked. I had just spent the last hour digging through hundreds of soapstone boulders of all shapes and sizes trying to select a small group of stones that would become my next batch of grizzly bear carvings. There was one in particular that I kept coming back to. I had pulled it out of a pile of soapstone from India that my supplier directed me onto as per my request for ‘something with interesting color’. The shapes were odd and this boulder I had pulled from the pile was no exception. It was a strange shape and weighed about 150lb. I rolled it around on the rain soaked asphalt trying to find an angle that would work for a grizzly bear. In the end this funny shaped boulder with potential became the stone I used for “Gaia”, the largest of the group of 5 stones I chose that day.
It was a couple weeks later back at my carving studio when I lifted this piece onto my carving table and began the process of carving “Gaia”. There were a few angles that had potential and in the end I decided on a position where I was getting a lot of height in the stone and that would offer a nice balance of having a bear standing on some large boulders.
During my years of stone carving I have actually shied away from soapstone because I preferred stones that once carved would never scratch. However soapstone is a fascinating material. This piece in particular was very dense which means it could ‘hold an edge’ very well, where a lot of marble, the granulars are too coarse and end up crumbling along the edges.
Another fascinating quality of soapstone is that it is very sensitive to the movements of the artist, recording every little detail and impression I make during the carving process. As a result I found the stone always had an interesting texture that emerged as that history of movements and decisions I made as I worked.
As a result I didn’t even polish the face. I left it with all the tool marks which I found to give the face a lot more dimension and depth. I was also able to pull out a few more textures in the base. I seemed to be less concerned about covering up these marks I made during the carving process where with this piece I found all these marks actually gave the piece more interest and is something I will look to explore in future pieces as well.
I moved through this piece at a nice pace. The form came together nicely as well and had a nice ‘weight’ and movement to it.
I am excited to get to my other soapstone pieces and continue to open up and explore this new dimension of ‘texture’ that emerged within the carving of “Gaia”
I am glad I embraced soapstone as a new material to work with. It is now opening up new and unexpected dimensions of carving that introduce more depth and versatility in my carving expression.
The pose of this grizzly I felt had a nice strength, groundeness and power to it. I went through a lot of names and eventually decided on ‘Gaia’ which is the Greek word for ‘Earth’. I also found a city in India named Gaya which I thought was a nice connection to make with the title to reference where the stone originated from.
Click Here to view the full image catalog of Gaia – http://andrewgableart.com/product/gaia/