Carrara marble with maquette

Oriata was a real challenge. In raw form, she was a beautiful 200 pound, two-foot high block of Carrara marble. This was back in 2005 while I was studying at the Art Students League — and before I understood the joys of direct carving. I began the piece as my instructor directed, first by making a clay maquette of what I wanted the sculpture to look like. The instructor then showed me how to measure, mark, and finally translate each angle of the maquette onto the stone, and remove whatever fell outside of those angles. Here’s an early picture of the block with the maquette on top of it. You can see how carefully the stone was marked to correspond with the maquette.

All the marking and measuring…this was going to be quite the process!

About the author

Learn about Carol Griffin's background and view her abstract figurative sculptures and still life drawings.