Even as a child I liked the idea of making something out of stone. Art wasn't much of a topic at home though and we had no contact with artists. After starting at university I kept my eyes open for a course on sculpting, but those I found weren't attractive to me. In 1994, by which time I'd had a job for quite some time, I discovered the course by Mark Rietmeijer. I liked it because you started working with stone right away. All these other courses started out with drawing and modelling before being allowed to work with stone. The course only lasted for half a year, after which a couple of people and I rented the studio once a week. The following year I took a course on working with marble, also given by Mark.
So sculpting became more and more a central part of my life. First I took a job for 4 days a week, then I took a sabbatical and after that I found a payed job for 5 mornings a week.
Natural stone. A couple of years ago, during my sabbatical, I lived in Portugal for a few months. I brought back a lot of marble from around Vila Vicosa and some softer limestone. I'm still working with those.
Before that I've also used Italian marble, which is softer and finer grained than Portuguese marble. It's easier to make details in, but more fragile. Perhaps that depends on the actual quarry were it's found, it's difficult to find information about stone and quarry's that is usable for sculpting. Mostly I have to go by experience from colleagues and myself.
At the moment I don't use any other kinds of stone. Basalt, granite and sandstone contain silicium-based minerals that are (even) more dangerous to your health than limestonedust. Or, like serpentine, they can contain asbestos. The body can't get rid of that dust. Our current studio is not suited for working with that kind of stone, because there is no air filter.
Mostly I use a hammer and a pointed chisel. I want to work in a way that suits the material. For me, that means removing stone slowly to reach a definite form. I don't construct a stone sculpture in the sense of adding different pieces together. In preparing a stone I might use a technique of cleaving and I use electrical equipment sometimes for the first stage of scouring. I don't work according to a pre-made model or design, so most of the time electrical or pneumatic tools are not much use to me as they go to fast. I like the simple tools, they get me where I want to be.
The work itself is a search. To me that is fun, it's the driving force. The search for solutions to the sculpture-to-be is, mentally, the hardest part. I have to find the answers to questions like: What shape will this become and how exactly will its components be related to each other? With how much detail can I make each element, given the structure and strength of the material? If the front side looks like this, how should I make the other sides?
The end result of my work is a stone sculpture that doesn't look much like stone anymore. The sculptures look soft, they beg to be touched. The shapes are abstract, consisting mostly of more than one element. Those elements form a composition, they lean against one another, cross one another... They are still one piece though, made out of one stone. Usually I don't even place the sculpture on a socle; I try to make sculptures that can be seen from all sides, even up and downwards. They are best placed in an open space. The elements are not strictly geometrically shaped, but twisted or bent, they change into other forms.
The borders between the body of the sculpture and its surroundings I see as lines in three-dimensional space. I am interested in the dancelike movements of these lines. The lines themselves can be simple, e.g. curves, colloids(sp), parallel, yielding... The contrasts and relations between lines is what is important. The way the lines play around each other can be seen as the fourth dimension of the sculpture. It is as if you see movement when you follow the lines with your eyes and look at it from different sides.
The "Rode Vrouw" [red woman], yes, that's right. [no picture available yet, sorry] You could recognize a womens back there, though in an abstract way. It has a second element, a sort of curved slab. One could give it a meaning, saying that it depicts two modes or two moods of the same back; soft vs. tense. Usually the sculptures don't show such an obvious "romantic" meaning, although looking back I often do see some kind of "emotion" in my sculptures.
I start out with selecting a stone. That depends on availability, volume, form, colour, quality and such.
Placing the stone on a workbench can be a challenge in itself when it's a heavy stone, say more than 100 kg. During this I am already very much involved with the stone, just looking, feeling and imagining...
Then I start chiseling, this partly is testing the material. I try to judge its hardness, colour and layerdness. There may be soft or broken parts, I try to judge their extent. Everything that isn't solid enough I remove, it would fall off later on anyway.
The 'real' work continues in one of two different ways.
Sometimes I just start out chiseling and react to what happens. To me, that also means I have to work in the stone and that I shouldn't just scratch the stones surface. Reacting to what happens means that I must watch what I'm doing, must watch what happens. Perhaps I see the contours of two elements developing, perhaps some part breaks away or perhaps I just find the current form boring...
Sometimes I have some basic form in my mind. Not really a three-dimensional one, more like a very simple drawing, for example a circle and a stick, and their connection. With my last sculpture I was thinking of a menhir form and a sickle, but that's only a starting point.
In both cases I must adapt while I go along. For example because some part is not interesting when seen in three dimensions or because of judgement errors or because the material is not suited for the shape I want to create. These can be dramatic choices, when I must fundamentally change the form.
While chiseling there are a lot of options open. That is part of the excitement. The amount of options decreases while working, and slowly one starts to discover the final shape. It just develops. That, to me, is radically different from 'finding the form that is already in the stone'. That doesn't describe my own experience. To me, there is neither a pre-existing nor a pre-conceived shape. It is instead the way the material, the work-process, moods and time influence each other that results in a sculpture. It is like a journey without a given destination: the journey counts and, with all its unexpected moments, has its own value.
During this phase, I value discussions with other sculptors. Especially when I must decide on how to continue, I want to talk about it. But that only works if I have a definite question, which is only later on in the process. I need someone who can appreciate what I have done so far and who can react to that. If I must defend basic choices, instead of asking my question, the conversation can be counterproductive.
You could say the form 'arrives'. There comes a point where I know I have done all I can at the time. Often, during the final stages, I am already working on the next piece. Even months after I finished a sculpture it often feels as if I haven't made that. I need to get used to it again. Then I start noticing things I would do differently now. That is my own development process. Such a sculpture is a finished sculpture, it is good enough, but not perfect. In fact I am already working on the next sculpture, and I will incorporate the lessons learned.
Finishing means, at least until now, removing the marks made by the chisel, first with a toothed chisel, than with filing and scouring. It only is a surface treatment that shows off the contours better. The sharper and smoother these contours, the better you see the forms and their relation.
Sometimes I polish or wax the stone but that can be counterproductive, because reflections and the stone's own colours can distract the viewer from the pure form.
Partly the material itself governs my choices, partly it is my own intuition or feeling. All parts of the sculpture have some kind of relation to each other. A harmonic relation, or a contrasting relation. I am starting to feel that there is a universal awareness of what harmonic (and disharmonic) relations are. I have found that everyone (that is till now, mostly north-west Europeans) judges my sculptures according to this same awareness of its (dis)harmony. Those judgements are spontaneous. People with or without art-education all recognize something in abstract sculptures and judge what they see looking for contrast, harmony, relations, etc.
Another criterium I use is simplicity vs. complexity. Complexity in a sculpture can exist in three dimensions. What one judges to be simple or complicated does seem to differ between different people.
I can't say there are any, really. With hindsight, sometimes I can see what has influenced me. E.g. other sculptors I came into contact with, like Mark and his ideas about forms, about trying to push the limits of the material. Or like Kurt Baruch, I met him when I was making the 'Rode Vrouw'.
Last year's exhibition shows that a lot of sculptures by the Rietmeijerschool have some likeness, although they were not made at the same time or in the same place.
Biological forms, mathematical forms could be said to influence me, but I can only sometimes recognize this, and then only with hindsight. It's not really a conscious thing.
I treasure them. A year ago I started exhibiting them. I want to show them and perhaps sell them. And I make them part of my life by putting them all in my house as far as possible.
I don't want to make a living out of it, or at least I don't want to have to depend financially on my sculpting. I want to be free to make what I want when I want to. I would like to sell part of my sculptures, but deciding on a price is difficult. An average-sized sculpture easily takes a couple of months to finish. Against any reasonable hourly wage, that adds up to a large sum. Then you still have to calculate material cost, studio rent, the sculptures uniqueness, etc. A gallery-owner will charge a 40-60% margin above my own price... The way I choose a price differs per sculpture, mostly it depends on how I perceive its quality to be.
First and foremost: I like doing it. That has to do with the physical labour and the mental challenge. It creates 'flow' as Csikszentmihalyi would call it. The work is like meditation in its physical aspects and in the concentration needed to see where I need to remove stone to reach a definite form.
Another reason is the social process, the meetings with fellow sculptors. Talking about it with other people. There isn't any struggle for power or influence, no backfighting. Dealing with people who are also doing what they like to do. In (payed) jobs that is often different. There I've only seen such a spirit for shorts periods.
Last but not least, sculpting is something I must do myself and where its only me who influences the end result. I'm free of constraints and values of other people. Its like a safe haven where I feel well.
To realize a tangible endresult; that is what the earlier mentioned journey without a destination leads to. That result also means being able to show my work. The objects I make are abstract and unique in the sense that a given viewer hasn't seen them before. Mostly that leads to curiosity, I like to see that reaction. It could also lead to instant rejection of the object by the viewer, but to me that says more about the basic negative attitude to new things of the viewer.
Talking about curiosity; in last year's exhibition the visitors showed a real need to look at the sculptures and to talk about them. I didn't know or expect it to work that way. I liked that experience very much. To stimulate curiosity is what I often try to do elsewhere, but I have always tried it with words and discussions. Now I have a new 'tool'. It is not really a goal in itself, but it is a nice, and also welcome by-product.
I myself also want to take a new look at the endresult and want to be able to touch it. In a sense I rediscover the sculpture after it is finished.
Individually, in my presence, yes. It is an important aspect of the sculptures, the "touchability". Unfortunately, the material is easily damaged, which makes this a bit of a problem. To people who don't know stone, its vulnerability often is a surprise. I also thought it to be very durable. Seen as a lump of mass it is durable, but the details of a finished sculpture, like edges and smooth surfaces are not. The stone is easily scratched with a ring for example and touching leaves chemically reactive sweat and fats that will damage the stone.
I also make so-called handstones, that are meant to be felt. Those are small and take much less time to make. I don't mind the wear and tear so much. To me, it is a way to make it possible to feel and touch the forms.
For children, touching is an important part of experience and necessary to the development of the visual sense. To most people my work will be unusual, unexperienced. That is why even adults want to explore the forms with their hands, just like children, I think.
I try to spend 4 or 5 days a week about 4 hours a day sculpting. With preparations, breaks etc. that will be 6 to 7 hours. Besides that, I spend time on the studio itself, cleaning, maintenance and on my tools and materials, also maintenance, buying etc. That should be added to the 7 hours.
Its hard to calculate the mental time spent, for example looking at forms while walking in town or in the dunes, thinking about problems of shape and composition.
The time really spend sculpting varies from very intensive weeks to weeks with hardly any "real" work getting done.
Sculpting, in one way or the other determines my agenda, outside of my private life that is. I have a half-time job in order to be able to make my art without commercial compromises. When invited to work more hours in my part-time job I always tell them no. I'm lucky to have a ICT-job (a subject that also interests me very much) and the only trap is that to much creative energy flows into the payed work.
* * *
Gyelt Tuinstra