THE MASKS OF MY MUSE

Artists need a sense of community or belonging. Pietrasanta was that community for me. The ambiance of the area is appealing. This twelfth-century town is nestled between the Ligurian Sea and the marble mountains south of Carrara. It is a place where artists and craftsmen work together with heightened creativity and exceptional performance. People return time and time again with a feeling of coming home to a state of well being and excitement. It was here I made my self-discovery and learned to live a three-dimensional lifestyle of discovery, dedication, and discipline.

I worked in the many famous marble studios and saw them passed down from father to son. I learned from the Italian artists and artisans who had a reputation and the ability for extraordinary craftsmanship in marble and bronze. In the art workshops I found artisans reproducing the great classical sculptures of the world in fine statuary marble. With their expertise and refined skills, they are able to reproduce the creations of the original artists by enlargement or exact replica. In the twenty-three summers I spent in Pietrasanta, I watched six full size copies of Michelangelo’s David being carved in marble for orders from China, Australia, and the United States. Many were done in the Cervietti workshop along with other classical works for religious decorations and ecclesiastical orders. Other studios in the area focus on more contemporary sculpture under the direction of the artists commissioned to create original sculptures for specific sites on galleries throughout the world.

Besides famous artists with household names, students of all ages have discovered Pietrasanta as a place to learn about marble carving. My passion for marble and my discovery of the Italian method of stone carving prompted me to start the first school of its kind in Pietrasanta for foreigners. At this waiting there are many schools established that are continuing in the tradition.

Before I walked through the ancient archway to enter the Piazza of the Duomo (Cathedral), for the first time in the year 1973. I read the poem carved in marble to the left of the archway. It was written about Pietrasanta by Giusso Carducci, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1906.

Quel che mi piace e Pietrasanta
Bellissima cittadina
Con una piazza unica
Una cattedrale da gran citta
e sfondo, le Alpi Apuani.

Translated, it says Carducci loved the beautiful little city of Pietrasanta with its unique piazza and cathedral of a big city. It is located before the Alps and it is a country to take into your soul.

Before that first year, I had traveled to Italy in my imagination a year before I actually arrived there. When I return to college at age forty-two for a Master’s degree, I attended a psychology seminar in Guided Imagery. “If you were free to do anything at all,” the professor asked, “what would you like most to be doing right now?” The thing I thought about in my mind’s eye was a trip to Florence. I created an image of myself sitting in a piazza, sipping a glass of wine and viewing Michelangelo’s marble statue of David.

A year later I did go to Italy to create a body of sculpture to complete my degree. There, I had a feeling of déjà vu. As I sat in a small outside cafe in the Piazza de Signoria in Florence, my fantasy became a reality. At the end of a narrow street with ancient Renaissance buildings on both sides I saw the sculpture of David (a copy, the original is in the Academia).   I felt I had come home to the place I held sacred in my mind. It was only then I knew it was right to be there since I had just ran away from a twenty-five year marriage. The wine I was drinking was very good and very real. I felt blessed as a newly independent woman able to find my way in the old world.

Tuscany is the ideal place to go to experience the Renaissance and I was having one for myself. The beauty and museums of Florence are an attraction to visitors from every part of the world. Pietrasanta, only one and one-half hours from Florence