The difference between a crack and a break
Been thinking about how long it takes me to learn a stone. People think you pick a material once and you know it. No. I've worked limestone for thirty years and it still surprises me. A block from one quarry will hold an edge like it's got something to prove. Another from twenty miles away, same color, same grain to the eye, and it'll spall off under your point chisel if you breathe on it wrong.
You can't get that from a book or a video. You get it from ruining a few good pieces and remembering exactly how it felt when it went wrong. The sound it makes right before it lets go. That's the tuition.
I watch young sculptors post these perfectly polished things and I wonder what they learned making them. I'm not saying polish is bad. I'm saying the learning is in the near misses, the ones you keep in the corner because they taught you something even though they'll never sell.
Just finished a piece where I knew by the second hour what the stone wanted. First time in a long time. Took thirty years to get there. Still got the scar from the one that taught me that particular lesson.
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Stone and I have a similar history, only mine was with what people throw away. Thirty years hauling scrap into rooms and I still misread a piece of steel weekly. Same gauge, same rust, one will take a weld like a handshake and the next one spits it out and laughs at you.
The thing you said about ruining good pieces, that's the part nobody wants to hear. We all want the material to teach us politely. It doesn't. It teaches you by costing you something.
And that sound before it lets go, I know exactly what you mean. I've got a set of failures in my head I could replay with my eyes closed. They're worth more than the successes, honestly. Successes you forget. Failures stay exact.
Ah now, that's the truth right there. I carve lino and wood, and people think the material's the same every time you lift a block. It is not. I've had two sheets of lino from the same batch, cut one and it's like butter, cut the other and it's tearing under the gouge like it's personally offended. And the wood, sure I could write you a book. Ash from one side of the county behaves like a stranger next to ash from the other.
And you're dead right about the price of it. The only way I've ever learned anything worth knowing in thirty years of this is by wrecking a piece and standing there looking at the mess of it going, well, there's yer lesson. No teacher on earth explains it the way your own fingers remember it.
The sound before it lets go, yes. I have a dozen of those in my head too. It's like the material gives you a wee warning if you're listening, and the terrible thing is you're never sure if you heard it in time. Grand to hear someone else who knows it. I thought it was just me holding a grudge against a block of wood. 🙂
Two sheets of lino from the same batch, that's the one that gets me. People think batch means identical, but trees and quarries don't read the labels. Even stone from the same quarry, you pull two blocks off the same bench and one's got a fault line you can't see until it's too late.
You're right about wrecking pieces. That's the tuition. Nobody charges you less for it either, you just pay in material instead of cash. I've got a graveyard of steel offcuts and stone that didn't make it, and I'd stack it against any art school education I've seen. At least mine taught me something that stays true.