Sculpture As Shared Experience
September 04, 2024
As we near the end of the summer and catch our breath, even just a little, the transition of seasons invites a pause to reflect on all that’s been in motion this year. Not only did Richard complete his largest work since Passage—the Carrara marble sculpture Belladonna—but he has explored new forms that include the Piccolo collection and most recently, the Hoku works inspired by the power of water and the prints of Japanese artist Hokusai. Richard’s days have been full and inspired, and both our Vermont and Italy studios are bustling. In this interview with curator Rachel Jones, Richard discusses the energy and influences behind his latest marble sculptures.
Salient I
2022
Carrara marble
102 x 54 x 50 inches
Rachel Jones: You’ve recently finished the second largest work of your career—can you share more about this piece?
Richard Erdman: Belladonna in Carrara marble– it’s more than 16 feet tall and actually has a backstory related to a piece that was very important to my career. I first made a version of the Belladonna form in the early 1980s; it was one of my first bronzes, and I also made a red travertine version at about 6 feet–a nice size for a tall, slender piece. When the Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Gardens expressed interest in acquiring a large work, I offered this one—Kendall’s agent said, we’ll take that, but we think you need to come down to visit us to see what we mean by large. When they said “big” to me at age 31, [six feet] is all they got. A real patron like this one, though, pushes an artist to think, What could you do if you were dreaming? And so Passage was born…
And now Belladonna is here with a new life in a new size. It’s so interesting: just because you make something early in your career doesn’t mean that it won’t resonate just as powerfully in a different scale and material decades later…maybe this will find its place rightly and that’s what this Belladonna did. Even for me, it’s almost a surprise: now you’re looking up at it, you step back and you’re seeing it in a whole new way. It creates and commands its own space the way, similar to architecture. It’s always a delightful surprise for an artist to realize there is always new information to mine from a piece. When this particular client said they envisioned Belladonna at 18 to 20 feet, I almost laughed…do you know what that means in marble? It’s wonderful to know that there is no limit.
Belladonna
2024
Carrara marble
200 x 63 x 36 inches
RJ: Speaking of scale, you’ve also been experimenting with going the other direction. Can you talk a little about your new Piccolo works?
RE: These new pieces are all under two feet tall and have been a lesson that a work doesn’t have to be large to be thrilling. I can still express the softness of stone, but by making the forms small they become like treasures, like jewels. Jewels have always been one of humankind’s favorite expressions of significance. These are more personal, more intimate, more mobile—they’re not fixed to a single location like a six-foot piece. And as a series, as a collection, they can tell a story.
Working at this scale has also given me a different vantage on marble as a material, because of how precise and close the handwork is. Morbido means ‘soft’ in Italian, and morbidezza is a term used to describe Michelangelo’s work. It means that if you push into the marble, it’ll be like flesh, just like if you push on your cheek. That’s the goal. Because [with marble] you’re grinding little crystals of life, of pure calcium, you have to do it very carefully.
I’m so in love with the stone. You don’t need to look anywhere else: marble is the most noble and life-giving stone to express ourselves. The pieces have to speak of the material; I’m just a messenger bringing this [4 hundred million] year old material back to life. It’s happy to be back. That’s my secret source.
Flume
2023
Carrara marble
18 x 15 x 10 inches
Muse
2022
Carrara marble
22 x 18 x 18.5 inches
RJ: And what about the new Hoku works?
RE: These were in part inspired by the Hokusai show, Hokusai: Inspiration and Influence, at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. It was so inspiring. His 36 Views of Mount Fuji—and particularly the print known as the “The Great Wave”—is his Mona Lisa; after seeing that, the show finishes with a room filled with different artist homages to the Great Wave: Roy Lichtenstein, a Lego wave, you name it. I wanted to do my own wave, and I wanted to look at water differently. I made these sculptures more like water themselves, rather than my tradition of placing the sculpture on top of water like a lily pad.
It is always exhilarating to witness the birth of new forms—with this still-emerging body of work, we glimpse a return to earth, a renewed reveling in organic structures, and the possibility of stone to give them new life.
Hoku I
2024
Carrara marble
22 x 19 x 17 inches
Hoku II
2024
Carrara marble
22 x 20 x 16 inches
