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Pietra Viva

“ Flesh, marble, flower, Venus, it’s you I believe in!
Chair, marbre, fleur, Vénus, c’est en toi que je crois!”

Arthur Rimbaud

On a still-evolving series of recent works made by Marta Alexandra Abbott at Fondazione il Bisonte in Florence, Italy; the results of a mission to the moon.

I came to know the above quote the same way that I found myself taking in the lunar-like scenery of a quarry in Carrara during the winter of 2021; Jason Logan of the Toronto Ink Company asked if I was up for finding a way to make it Carrara from Rome and gather marble dust as a test-material for use as an ink. I then asked Fondazione Il Bisonte, a beautiful and storied printmaking studio in Florence, Italy, if they would allow me to conduct my ink-making experiments under their guidance, in a sort of staccatoed, self-directed and meandering residency that spanned several months. This with the intention of using antique methods for finding new ways to communicate on paper. 

The work you see is a result of my efforts to translate what I discovered during my walk on the moon amidst the supernatural glow of the marble. 

Flesh

We tend to see ourselves as beings that exist separately from nature, when in fact, we are very much an extension of the natural world and it an extension of us. In my work I am interested in the interaction between man and nature. While it is our minds that conceive of the ways we can engage with nature, it is our hands, our skin, our musculo-skeletal systems, our flesh, that are the instruments with which we can realize our ideas and which must learn to interact with natural materials.

Marble

Marble is heavy and hard, but light passes through it, like it passes through our hand when we hold a flashlight up to it. Marble is a sum of material, time, and environment, and our attraction to it is an example of our desire, perhaps even better described as a need, to create from the beauty we find in the natural world, and the way that beauty compels us to learn how to manipulate and translate the source of our inspiration into our own language. 

Flower

Just as marble is somehow malleable and rigid at the same time, a material to sculpt from but which also lets sunbeams and candle light pass through it,flowers are quiet beings that appear to be fragile and fleeting, but which can weather a storm and regenerate, They are reminders of the strength in softness, a response to the unlikely softness of marble’s strength. When investigating the properties of the ink made from marble dust, I wondered how to communicate its properties, how to animate it and bring it to life. Flowers, another result of time, light, environment and chemistry were the answer. 

Venus

The idea of beauty is often confounded with that which is superficially pleasing, a source of satisfaction that lacks substance. True beauty, however, the kind that you can feel in your chest and in your veins, the kind that helps you see the importance of both the light and the dark, whose imperfections help you understand the workings of the universe you exist within, this is the kind of beauty I found in the marble and in the flowers, and which I wish to transmit through my work. 

...it’s you I believe in!
Moon

When we arrived at the marble quarry, all I could think of was that it must be the closest I’d ever been to experiencing a lunar landing. The glowing light, the texture of the rough stone, the pools of rainwater swirling with marble dust in patterns and rhythms that seemed otherworldly, the variations of incandescent whites and greys that  permeate your eye from every plane and angle.

It turns out that the moon and marble share common minerals in their composition, magnesium and calcium among them. In regards to the formation of marble, it is often the case that the astral dust originally came from its earthly iteration as sea shells which, freed from their usual watery depths because of shifts in the earth’s inner landscapes are compounded and compacted into what eventually becomes marble. They say that all matter on Earth originates from stardust, so perhaps that also includes moon dust.