Found on Facebook: James Larson
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- Last Updated: Tuesday, 04 April 2017 21:43
“Window Rock, A Love Affair”, Colorado marble, 62” tall. I collect stones that I like the shape of. I look at a stone that I bought or that was given to me and ponder and ponder and ponder. I’m fairly versatile so I may think “landscape” or I may think figurative. In this case, I chose to go landscape. I carved it in Santa Fe, NM. over a 9 month period. It is a sand blown molded mountain that has contained Native American Cave dwellings. I took the idea to Europe for the Gothic Arches and added the Nurturing Bird Monster/Vine Creature who loves this mountain and has clutched it for a very long time. Her offspring/limbs cling equally lovingly to the rock.Hello stone carvers and other artists and craftsmen and craftswomen.
Ancient woman”, Carrara marble on steel and wood base, 20” high. Carving a sweet head or face of a fragment of good rock is fun, but nobody says it’s easy. Faces are extremely difficult. Who doesn’t know that? We are a family who think alike and we share similar approaches to our work. I would like to share what my approach to my marble carving is. First of all, I need the stone in front of me to work from. In all of my life I have never had a perfectly cut stone to work from, nor have I ever wanted one.
I went to art school at MCAD (Minneapolis College of Art and Design) because I had carved many sculptures in wood and friends urged me to go to art school. In Art School I found an abandoned chunk of Greek Marble that was white with big crystals and nobody claimed it. I carved my version of the face of Morpheus, the god of Dreams and that was the starting point for me.
One can look back on that time and wonder, “Why would this be a starting point for the need to carve marble?” Is it that I come from Norwegian carpenters and boat makers and stone masons? Perhaps. My Dad is buried in a cemetery in Sioux Falls, So. Dakota where his Dad built the stone walls and the tower in that cemetery out of rounded river rocks from the Sioux river. One wonders about that and one wonders why I would be the first person in our family to pursue art in marble carving.
I went to Italy: first Florence, then Pietrasanta and finally Rome and how can you resist all of those influences?
“Waterfall”, Colorado Marble with Minnesota granite base, 52” tall. I think I made this after a good stint of carving in Italy. Roughly speaking, there are three generations of men: the vibrant current generation in the front, the aging generation in the background and the new generation of waterfall on the left with nurturing leaves to support it. The lizards crawling and scampering are symbolically protective.My Approach to marble carving is simple… I start with a good sound piece of marble that I like the shape of. One can always change the shape even without knowing what you are going to carve. You all have this. Faith, that your diving into this stone is gonna carry you through to a decent outcome. I rarely know where I’m going at first but the faith that you feel that you have with that shape of stone carries the day. Often, I have a sense of what I’m after but the Faith in the stone usually gives you the idea of where to insert this or that. I should mention here that this approach works mostly on the premise that you are winging it and you don’t care exactly where you end up. Hopefully, in a good result, however.
I have carved many tombstones in Rome in relief, and some tombstones in Minnesota where you need to keep in step to what people expect of you for that paycheck. However, to have a chunk of marble with the freedom to carve whatever comes to mind is a nice place to be.
Can I qualify, "a nice place to be?” Is not, "carving marble" a Nightmare in and of itself? Headaches galore? Horrible dreams of what decisions you could make and didn’t make? How you got cocky and took too much off of here and how do you compensate for it over there? Carving marble is a nightmare but one should go forth and suffer. Because when it’s done to your satisfaction, you can say…
“Spirit Island”, Carrara marble, 32” wide. We, up here on Lake Minnetonka have a Spirit Island, small and uninhabitable, yet who wouldn’t want to give it a try? I imagined a piece of earthly land that has endured multiple thousands of civilizations and architectural styles. I made a time conglomerate of all of those periods of time and architecture and wrapped them into one “Spirit Island.”
“Venus”, maybe Indiana marble, 20” tall. I found it on a pile of Minnesota granite at A Cold Springs Granite site and the staff thought it was a piece of crap. I asked can I buy it, and they said get that thing out of here. So I did. Honestly, this torso is the only totally hand carved sculpture in this group except for the black granite base which was manufactured at a stone plant. I carved it at a place with no compressor, so I forged my own chisels and really messed up the tempering until I finally got the hang of it.
“Mary Magdalene”, Portuguese Marble on Wood Base with gold and silver leaf, 37” tall. My attempt at the Heroine of the Bible for surviving the male dominated editing process. In my way I wanted to show her as deeply physical and having her neck extend into the spiritual world. The dark vein on her cheek indicates her scars from embattling the system as she evidently did. 
“Roman Numeral One”, with French marble base, Colorado marble, 30” tall. This is your basic bald guy with a long beard who is presented on a roman column. I am calling all my roman columns Roman Numerals.
Many of his works are about the human connection. The sculpture “Reflection” is a good example. It represents dealing with the devastating earthquakes that rocked Christchurch in 2010 and 2011. During this time so much loss was experienced that the sculpting of this piece was a way of releasing the built-up emotions. One head faces backwards, acknowledging the past sorrow and the other faces forward looking towards an unknown future and all the promise it holds. 
FOUND ON FACEBOOK: 
Very rarely, stones are treated so dramatically that they become light. But it is only by completing these successive transformations that the alabaster boulders become messengers which convey ideas about hope and happiness. Hoping for a better life and searching for happiness are the most fundamental ideas humankind wants to find and search for.
It is not about tools or machines, stone, technical abilities or strength of the mind, it is about living a passion, keeping the soul eager to progress, searching for one’s feelings to go upwards, to lead a true life without compromising the inner self.”
And I was tired by that time of the glare on the white stone, and wanted to play - every piece in the symposium was white - boring! So I watered down some acrylic paint and painted 
I make art because I must. It's a cellular need. There are times I feel grumpy or irritable, and a friend will say, "Get thee to thy studio and all shall be fine!" And she's right. Carving these simple, expressive forms, the voluptuous, sensuous, simplified stone beings who are light on their feet and have bellies full of laughter to silently deliver to any viewer who stops and appreciates, fil
Karel Vreeburg is a a 60 year old stone sculptor living in Harrlem, Netherlands. On a straight line he’s 4 miles east of the Atlantic and 11 miles west of Amsterdam. He speaks French, German, English and Netherlands Taal (NT2).
He dreams of working a really large object in the future, he writes. Yet another idea is an animated projection whereby complementary parts of a stone sculpture made of ice or snow and adapted to the colours of the stone would melt and flow away. Animation could produce a sort of creation and destruction – a coming and going in a sort of breathing or respiration.
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