A Look into the Stone

"I was lucky from the start", he says, "because I already knew at 15 I wanted to be a sculptor." About 10 years after that, he was offered a stipend at the summer academy in 1986 and thus took part in the first stone sculpture symposium there which helped him realise that stone was in fact his material to work with. "It was and still is a bit different though, normally in those symposiums that have now spread all over the world professional sculptors come and work together for a month or so, but here another aspect is added, that of the teaching."

This is also what he really enjoys about being back now, the working side-by-side with people coming from completely different artistic fields that have always had an interest in working with stone but have no experience at all. "They have a completely different way of looking at the stone, a certain innocence. This I find very fascinating." He's always ready to share his expertise, his materials and tools, some of them built himself, a thing he really loves doing as it helps him make the stone even more his material than it already is. "I like preserving the nature of the stone, for example, I would never make a round shape out of a square stone or the other way around." What he loves doing instead is hide his traces, work the inside of the stone through slits he makes in the bottom, sometimes even fully hiding all his work on it. "I draw a certain pleasure to see my work and be the only one that knows its hidden interior."

For all those wanting to discover something now, there will be a guided tour through the working site of the symposium and the quarry itself this Saturday, the 6th of August, at the Kiefer quarry at the foot of the Untersberg at 5pm. I for one am already looking forward to it and hoping for nice weather as it's really a lovely place to visit and linger at. [mp]