(gentle music) - If I had words for all the feelings and things that go into a piece of sculpture, I'd be a poet.

When I'm developing an idea for a piece of stone, typically the process is it goes from drawing and sketching various ideas.

And then I'll basically pick a winner.

And if I have questions before I get started about how it's gonna look, what I do is I'll just make a parallel line across to pick up certain elements in the two dimensional.

I'll start out with the scribble.

I'll start out with a non-specific idea.

I want to see something linear, tall.

I want to see something more broad.

Sometimes it depends on the stone that I have.

Many times when I'll have an idea and will wait years for the right stone.

Sometimes the reverse is true.

Sometimes I'll have a stone, a beautiful stone.

And the right idea for that stone comes years later.

They have to fit together.

The color, the striations in the stone.

Sometimes they'll go reverse to the idea that I have and the flow of the energy.

You know, I've done (upbeat music) a lot of figures without a head.

And sometimes, you know, when I do that, I'm looking for the energy of the core of the piece.

I'm looking to synthesize the energy of the piece down to its simplest form.

You know, your eye is drawn to the most interesting parts of it.

And of course, a figure with a head, the face is the most interesting part.

And you lose sometimes the energy of the flow of the lines.

I never had any art training at all.

My grandmother was an artist, you know, showed me how to paint when I was like eight.

I actually learned a lot from Michelangelo, photographs of some of his early tondos which actually show the carving directions.

And he would use the claw or the tooth chisel and follow the lines and the curves of the masses.

And from that, looking at that, thinking about it, it helped me enormously in terms of how he worked on transitions between elements like the cheek, the line of the cheek that goes into the nostril and how that actually works and how it's carved.

So, books were my teachers.

If you walk around a corner and see the piece and think, "You know, it could get better."

Then I do.

I go back into that piece.

And I'm not a bit shy about taking a chisel to a polished piece of stone.

You know, I don't think twice about it.

(relaxing music) And oftentimes I'm very satisfied with a piece.

It's my favorite piece when I finish it.

I love it.

And then, you know, time goes by.

And then I'm working on something else.

And then that becomes my favorite.

And there are some pieces that I do that I haven't shown and probably will never show.

I get as far as that idea will go.

And there are no more corrections to make, but it doesn't say what I need to say.

Wax has become one of my favorite modeling materials.

It's easy to work with.

You know, you can work on it 360 degrees by 360 degrees, from all directions.

And begin to work out the rhythms.

And I've done many, many pieces that don't work, you know.

And okay, they'll go sit aside or be melted down to start again.

And I developed a technique that works for me.

And I find as many reference points in space, in the stone as I can.

And that entails to basically cutting an outline.

So I've defined, you know, where things are in space.

You know, if it goes up this way.

If this sticks out, I know where that point is.

You find the points that protrude.

And you can do that by cutting out in two directions this way and this way.

So you start out with almost infinite number of reference points.

And then I began carving around to develop the masses.

(upbeat music) But everything that you learn, everything that you see, informs decisions as you're going through a piece.

You're never stagnant.

As long as you're creating, moving forward, It doesn't really matter to me whether or not this is an idea I explored 40, 50 years ago or not.

If I have something new to say now within that parameter, I'll say it.

(upbeat music continues)