Respect for the Block
I had to lose my respect for the stone when starting out. I could not bring myself to lambast the noble block; I shied away from using all my might. I made token swings with the hammer and was relieved when the chisel skipped and made only scratches.
Isn�t stone just another material? In the past it did not strike the awe it strikes in us now. They did not hesitate to hack it to pieces, to drive drills into it, to smooth it into the most unrock-like effeminate shapes and surfaces. All they wanted was its hardness. Sometimes all they wanted was its cheapness�in classical times, for example, when anyone would have preferred bronze. They painted over the surfaces to liven it up, treating stone no better then we do a mere plaster figure.
That respect is the same as the would-be writer has for the white sheet of paper, though a stone is much more deserving of deference, not only because it is much more expensive.
The stone is imposing because of its mass, its weight, its origin. It is nature�s own creation, the weird child of millions of years and of the mysterious forces that made the universe and us.
The respect a beginning sculptor feels for his block is also like what someone who knows only small animals feels before a horse or a cow. Such mass seems to be outside your power to control and possibly even its, the animal�s. The fear is that you may destroy the block but also, a little, that it might defend itself and crush your foot. It is too big a thing to be aggressive to.
Unlike the paper, the stone is suggestive. It is like a miniature mountain, with all its prominences and recesses; and it has a character like a mountain. People in the stone business get to know their blocks, which stand around like furniture in the workshop. You walk around them all day and at break-time your eyes rest on them. In Fernando�s shop they had all the right to stand where they were that the finished statues had, and just as must claim on your imagination. In fact, they had much more, since, sadly, very sadly, Fernando was one of those who copied, besides serious sculpture, trinkets and souvenirs, sometimes making large statues of little toy figures someone gave them an order to copy. And so most of the finished works that stood on the shelves around us were of the sort that cannot engage your imagination nor penetrate the deeper layers of your memory.
When I showed Fernand a plaster figure or told him about some work I was planning, he would say,�I�ve got just the stone for that, too�. Or: �If you ever get around to doing that bull, I�d like you to do it in the Marquina behind the grinder. I�ve been thnking of a bull for that one.�
Once you know them and after you have had them around, stumbled over them for months or years, daydreamed with your eyes on them ( and who knows if you were not led by them and their faces to think in the way you did), it is twice as hard to begin work on them and in one hammer-stroke to change altogether and forever what has been comfortingly fixed in your daily life.
The best way to lose your respect for a block of stone is to watch stone-cutters for awhile. They are not awed into inaction or retreat. There is a tool that was not mentioned in the list. It was not included because it is an accessory really. But it is as old as stone-cutting. That tool is the maul. It is chisel-shaped�the kind with the screwdriver head�but larger and heavier. It is even blunt. Its edge is bevelled.
It works cruelly on a block. In the hands of a skilled stone-cutter like Nicanor its effects are incredibly devastating. It does to the block what an earthquake does to the mountain. It actually causes an earthquake to the block, sending violent vibrations up and down it, which is how it works. In one stroke, with or against the vein, entire sections of the block will collapse, whole shoulders will fall crashing (and crushing if your foot is unadvised) to the ground.