Italy’s famed marble quarries beckon and inspire Oregon sculptor

For nearly 40 years, sculptor M.J. Anderson has been making annual trips from her home on the Oregon Coast to Carrara, Italy. She spends up to three months there, traveling along a winding road to quarries with towering walls of marble, the same kind of stone that was used to create Michelangelo’s sculpture of David and other timeless works of Renaissance art.

But Anderson isn’t interested in recreating classical, idealized representations of masculine or feminine beauty. Instead, as a recent exhibit of her work in Astoria showcased, a unifying theme of Anderson’s work is “the distillation of what it feels like to be woman.” Starting at her studio in Carrara, she uses grinders and air hammers to carve torsos evoking the female form out of massive blocks of marble, onyx and travertine. The pieces are then shipped, unfinished, to Anderson’s studio in Nehalem where she polishes them while retaining drill marks and other raw reminders of the stone’s past and its “power.” We’ll talk to Anderson about her artistic process and the themes that animate her work today.

The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. For 40 years, the sculptor M.J. Anderson has been going from her home in Oregon to Carrara in Italy. That’s where she gets her marble. That’s where Michelangelo got his more than 500 years ago. Anderson uses that marble, along with onyx and travertine to make all kinds of sculptures: abstract pieces that evoke elemental powers, liturgical pieces for churches, public art. But over and over, she has turned to figurative work. “The major theme running through my career is the female torso,” she wrote about a recent exhibition, “the distillation of what it feels like to be woman. When I first began to carve stone, I realized I wanted to give voice to my gender.” M.J. Anderson, welcome to Think Out Loud.

M.J. Anderson: Thank you, Dave.

Miller: Why marble?

Anderson: Marble lasts. And I’m the kind of person that doesn’t do very well with things that can be erased. And so carving marble means I’m always moving forward. There’s no looking back. I don’t glue things back on if they fall off. I can just keep moving forward. And that’s really helpful to me as a person. An artist wants to make their mark. And if I make my mark, I want it to last. And marble gives that to me.

Miller: It lasts for thousands of years, right?

Anderson: Thousands of years before I touch it, and hopefully thousands of years after.

Miller: Unlike almost everything else in life, everything else that we make- I suppose like a steel girder is gonna last for a very long time, but I don’t think of that as an expression of someone’s soul. It keeps a building up. A painting is gonna molder. All the digital stuff in our lives becomes sometimes irretrievable in 10 years if you can even find the cord to turn the thing back on. How do you think about time?

Anderson: I think geological time is. I studied geology in college at Portland State. And I like everything about the planet itself. And marble, some of you may not know, but marble was once alive. It’s a distillation of coral reefs and animals who lived in the sea billions of years ago. And so all of that product that was once alive is highly condensed, heated up, and shoved up into mountains. To me it’s a miracle. I’m carving something that was actually once alive.

Miller: And you’re aware of that in the moment?

Anderson: Yeah. It’s always there for me. It’s like my religion. Marble is like my religion in a way.

Miller: What does it feel like, or sound like when you’re carving it? Or smell like when you’re cutting it?

Anderson: It sounds very serious, art making.

[Laughing]

Miller: I don’t believe you. I do and I don’t, I should say.

Anderson: The nice thing is it keeps me in the present. And I can use a lot of different kinds of tools. But there is a marble from Carrara that’s called Bardiglio, it’s a gray marble, and it was my first true love of a material because I think it evoked the kind of colors of the Northwest, that kind of gray. And it goes well outdoors, which is nice.

But when I carve that Bardiglio, there’s a smell it has. So I’m smelling something that was once alive. So it really does enliven all my senses.

Miller: And you can smell its aliveness?

Anderson: Well, I personally can’t. But I think maybe other people think “oh, it’s a rock.” But people who have a passion for rocks, know what that passion is.

Miller: As I noted, for 40 years now, you’ve been going to Carrara. It turned into just your life going every year to get stones and also to do work before you eventually bring it back for finishing here. What’s special about Carrara?

Anderson: Especially in the early years, there was a really wonderful community of artists from all over the world.

Miller: Meaning the 1980s, for you the early years, not 1502 or something.

Anderson: Right, right. In the eighties there were a lot of artists working there. There’s fewer now that work there. We didn’t really talk about our work to each other that much, but we were all equally exhausted. We were all equally poor. And that was a really wonderful setting to be in. And when I do go back to Carrara and I work in the studio, I go to work like it’s a job. I try to leave the house by 8:00 or 8:30. I bicycle up the mountain. A lot of people think my bike an electric bike, but it’s not.

Miller: There’s no shame in e-biking.

Anderson: Yeah, maybe someday. I bike up to work, and the artigiani that work in that studio as laborers creating large public art for other artists, everyone’s working. And that buzz, that noise, that energy, I’m just another one of the workers, but I get to do my own work. So I’m very fortunate to be able to work there.

Miller: What’s special about the marble there? Why do you have to go all the way to Italy to get that rock?

Anderson: Well, I could go to Vermont, but the food is much better in Italy. When I was a very small child, we were lucky to have French and Italian classes. And when I was a small child, I wanted to grow up and live in Italy. And I actually get to live my dream. I get to have a double life, and that suits also who I am.

Miller: What are the quarries like there? Do you go and say, in Italian, “I want a block yea big?”

Anderson: When I have a large commission, I will go into the quarries and look for the right block. And it’s like going into cathedrals, because you have these large walls cut out of the mountain. It’s really a brutal process. It’s a mining process. Someone accused me of raping the mountains with my artwork. The marble used for art is so infinitesimal. That marble in Carrara is the best marble in the world. The crystalline structure is the best in the world. And if I’m gonna do all this work, why wouldn’t I use the best material?

When I go into the quarry, there’s all these giant machines, these tall ladders that are wired next to these walls of marble. There’s just such an energy there. But in reality, most of the marble that’s being quarried is quarried for the calcium in your cat food, the calcium in your orange juice, the calcium that you take every morning.

Miller: Wait, literally? The best marble in the world that could be used for big beautiful things or small, beautiful things that could last forever, it’s being ground up and put in cat food?

Anderson: And in the table that we’re sitting next to, in the carpet underneath our feet.

Miller: It’s used as calcium?

Anderson: Calcium carbonate.

Miller: Huh. And there isn’t a better way to get that? Well, I guess global capitalist society has decided that there is not a better way to get it?

Anderson: Thank you, that’s correct.

Miller: So you said that when you have a big commission, that that’s when you might go to the quarry. So a library says we want a  seven foot tall sculpture, and you have a picture in your mind of what it’s gonna be? If I went to go look at this big mining operation, I assume I would just see what might look like pretty rocks and big faces and parts that have been carved out and parts that hadn’t yet been carved. But I’m just wondering how you look at that and see what you’re going to make?

Anderson: I had a client, Seattle University wanted me to do an eight foot piece for their law library. And they were very specific, they wanted the absolute best marble.

Miller: “Nothing but the best for us.”

Anderson: So I said to them “what is the best wine?” Selecting marble is a lot like selecting grapes for wine. And I’m a little bit like a vintner. I know the differences between what different quarries offer, just like someone knows which different grapes will help make the better balance. So I know which quarries have which kinds of stone. And then at the end, it’s basically a crapshoot. Once you cut that stone open, you’re not so sure what really is going to be inside. There may be a darker vein that you did not see from the outside of that block.

Miller: Isn’t that part of the excitement for you as an artist? The whole idea of “I want the best marble,” it seems like an absurdity.

Anderson: Right. I actually like stone that has a little character, and brings something to the table with it. I always like to incorporate some of the rocky rock, natural skin of the stone in my work when I can.

Miller: Meaning you want to leave some of it unpolished?

Anderson: Uncarved. A natural skin. I did a large, very sturdy mermaid one time, but the whole back of that stone had probably 800 years of water markings on the back of that stone that was exposed. Geologically, that is just a fabulous surface. So I didn’t want to destroy that surface to make my work. So I needed to design a sculpture where that surface was celebrated, for example.

Miller: And it just happened that you were making a mermaid, so those water marks-

Anderson: I decided to make a mermaid because of those water marks.

Miller: So the rock can tell you what it should be?

Anderson: Well, almost every one of my sculptures tells me, I don’t tell it. The stone itself inspires who it wants to become in a dialogue with me.

Miller: So as I noted, my understanding is that after you do some work in Carrara, you’ll normally do the fine work and the finishing in your Oregon studio, which for a while has been in Nehalem. Why Nehalem?

Anderson: When I started carving, it’s a lot of noise in a neighborhood. And so working in a small town, it’s a lot easier to make noise. And Nehalem isn’t really as much of a tourist town as next door Manzanita. So they’re used to me now. I try not to make too much noise too early or too late. And I’ve gone to Italy part of the time. They’re always happy to see me go, I think.

Miller: It’s a working town, that’s part of why it works for you?

Anderson: It’s a little more of a working town.

Miller: And I mean, it’s also beautiful. There’s a river there, you’re essentially on the coast.

Anderson: I can hear eagles while I’m working, which is fabulous. But Portland is 10 degrees hotter in the summer and 10 degrees colder in the winter at least. And I work outside year round. I don’t have a luxury of a heated studio.

Miller: Do you work outside because it’s better for you? Why?

Anderson: Because I’m making dust. I’m fertilizing nature with calcium carbonate. So when I’m carving the stone, the dust has to go somewhere. Most sculptors all work outside, with a roof overhead.

Miller: Otherwise, you’d be breathing in too much?

Anderson: I’d be just standing in a cloud of dust in a room. Unless it’s a very large room.

Miller: You live in a more temperate climate so you can work in a more temperate climate. So you’re working outside in February?

Anderson: Yes, thank you. I am.

Miller: Is it an accident then that both of your studios, your workplaces, are near an ocean or a sea? What you just described is a climate reason for that. But I’m wondering if there’s a deeper reason, that you want to be near the water?

Anderson: My soul is happier near the water, certainly. And Nehalem is a fabulous place. Nehalem is a Native American word, and Native Americans live there, and it’s in a fabulous little triangle between the river, the bay, and the ocean. How more fabulous can that be?

Miller: How does that affect the work that you wanna do?

Anderson: I’m working with onyx now, which comes from Iran and Pakistan. And Carrara being the clearing house of all stone in the world, I can get it there in Italy. But it has a translucence to it. And I’m playing up that translucence. So the light of being on the coast really is very helpful for that.

Miller: I noted in my intro that you have said that over and over you have been drawn to female torsos, and to express your understanding of what it means to “be woman.” I wanted to make sure that I even got that grammar correct before we started. What do you mean by that phrase, “what it means to be woman”?

Anderson: My gender is a political statement. In the seventies, when we thought feminism triumphed, that certainly has not come to pass. So the same feelings and concepts I’m dealing with then, I’m still dealing with now, even more so and maybe with a stronger voice. And in the early years, I began carving the torso as autobiography, as victim, as female that needed to survive. The survival thing has really expanded. And I did a lot of torsos having to do with breast cancer. And now when I carve a torso, if it’s missing a chunk out of a breast, it was never there maybe, I don’t even see it when I carve it now, because it’s so much a part of my life palette, shall we say.

I don’t present the female as an alluring object. I use kind of a frontal stance, much like the Egyptians did. I don’t want my figures to perform for anybody. They should be enough in their own right, just like women should be.

Miller: And in particular, not to perform for men?

Anderson: In particular, yes. And not only sexually, but in every way in society, I still feel that women have unnecessary expectations put upon them to perform in any number of roles that are not necessary. Even if I do thin torsos, chubby torsos, old looking figures, all of those figures still have a real sense of stability. They’re immobile. They exist in their own right.

Miller: Do you work for models? Neither human ones, nor small works that you will then make larger.

Anderson: No.

Miller: So it’s all in your mind and in your hands?

Anderson: Well I do have a degree in sculpture. And I studied the figure more than anybody has a right to when I was in college for seven years. I studied the female, and male, torsos. And I’ve taught sculpture. But it’s really in the stone, and in my soul to arrive at those finished forms. I’m not carving a real figure. I’m carving an idea.

Miller: What’s the difference between those two?

Anderson: One time this small child was fascinated by my work he saw in a public area, and he really was bothering his relatives a lot about my work. And so they asked if they could bring him to the studio. And he arrived, and at some point he said “Ma’am, I don’t mean to be disrespectful or nothing. But why don’t they have heads?”

Miller: It’s a good question.

Anderson: And I looked down at myself and I said “I don’t see a head.” When I look down at myself, I don’t see my nude self. I don’t see my dressed self. I just see myself. And that’s more of an idea than just a visual representation. And just like a poem is more than just a compilation of different words. So my sculpture is similar in that way, I think.

Miller: It’s a profound idea. And I had never thought of it quite that way. I have looked at the torsos and I guess I have thought of them as nude torsos. But the way you describe it, what you’re going for is something different. Not nude, and also not clothed. Just the essence of a being.

Anderson: Exactly. Exactly.

Miller: I want to go back to something you said at the beginning about marble, which I think isn’t simply about marble, it’s about sculpture in rock, which is you didn’t want to work in something where you could erase something. There are no take backs in this. It’s what strikes me as one of the more terrifying aspects of the work you do. Digitally we can do ctrl+z or Apple+z to undo something. Painters can paint over things. In a lot of life, not all of it, but in a lot of life you can get a redo. If you chisel something and it falls off, and it’s not quite what you wanted, you’re stuck with it, right?

Anderson: I’m never really stuck with it, it just is going to become something else. Maybe not this week, maybe not next year. But in time, one day I’ll walk into the studio and see a piece that has been sitting there unfinished for eight years, and all of a sudden there’s a rainbow, there’s light at the end of the tunnel, there’s a vision, and I go “okay, now I know what to do and I can fix that.” Not fix it, but make it be someone else, or cut the top off, turn it upside down and start over.

Miller: But the framing I had in my mind, and I think I still have, is that there’s something scary about that. But it seems like you embrace the no take-backs of your work, and for you it’s actually something that you value about your craft.

Anderson: It is, it is. And it’s exciting. In the early years, every once in a while I’d be carving and hit a place and the whole thing would crack in half. And there’s kind of an excitement when that happens. I think I mentioned to your producer, it’s like a good car accident. A good car accident, if you’re in the middle of it and there’s nothing you can do, you might as well just lay back and enjoy it. Because who knows, this could be your last moment. And that should be a beautiful moment then.

Miller: I’m struggling with the adjective “good” in front of “car accident.” I think I understand your point. But it’s a lot to take in.

Anderson: It’s like the beauty in chaos.

Miller: So do you think that the work that you do, and that one hit of the chisel could make something fall apart, do you think that affects the way you live your life outside the studio?

Anderson: I do. And one of the things I’ve noticed, I work with Northwest Stone Sculptors Association, it’s about 150 people, and we all get along really well. We’re from all different aspects of life. But what I think making sculpture has taught me and all of us is that when you look at a three dimensional object, you have all these different views of it. From above, from below, one side looks better than another side. And you’re more forgiving. And you’re more forgiving of each other. And I think that sculpture and how I look at sculpture has changed how I live my life. And how I relate to other people.

Miller: M.J. Anderson, it was a pleasure talking to you. Thanks very much.

Anderson: Thank you. Great to be here.

Miller: M.J. Anderson is a sculptor who divides her time between Nehalem and Carrara, Italy, which is the world epicenter of marble and other stone trading as well. You can see a lot of her work right now at the Imogen Gallery in Astoria for another month or two.

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