By the way--we went to Italy--and it was wonderful :)
(And because it has taken so long to get these written and posted, I will try to be be brief.)
This was part of my program to become a Waldorf Teacher. As F likes to point out, typical in the Waldorf pedagogy is the focus on the experience, so, instead of just learning about great artists and different countries, we traveled to Italy and carved in marble--in the same area where Michelangelo did! Does it get cooler than that? Learning by doing.
My Dad also got to come! It was so fun to see him and have him carve with us. He is quite the artist and I knew he would enjoy it.
We were up in a little village in Tuscany, called Azzano (one of at least half a dozen Azzanos in Italy..this is the one in the Lucca Province, about 1 1/2 hours outside of Florence). The village was quaint, tiny and very Italian. Every little corner held a cat or a picturesque doorway or a hunk of marble--something that reminded us of where we were :)--in beautiful Italy. (The picture is of the next village down the mountain--Seravezza, where the rivers Sera and Vezza come together)
As the main part of our stay we were working with marble, but first we had to go to the river bed and find the rock that 'spoke' to us.
And once we found it, we needed to keep listening, because it would tell us how it flowed, where the energy flowed in and where it flowed out, where a concave surface flowed into a convex one and vice versa.
But first we had to peel it--chip off all of the porous, roughened surface that the stone had acquired by tumbling down a riverbed. Once that was off, the glittering, almost-translucent marble was revealed beneath.
I was surprised how relatively soft the white marble was--it really didn't take a lot of muscle to chip away at the rock, just careful positioning of the pointed chisel and a good hammer swing.
In the fall, during the 2nd year of the program, we'll work on part 2, chipping away the finer bits that don't belong and then polishing, bit by bit. We aren't done, but we came a good way and had a grand time!
This was part of my program to become a Waldorf Teacher. As F likes to point out, typical in the Waldorf pedagogy is the focus on the experience, so, instead of just learning about great artists and different countries, we traveled to Italy and carved in marble--in the same area where Michelangelo did! Does it get cooler than that? Learning by doing.
My Dad also got to come! It was so fun to see him and have him carve with us. He is quite the artist and I knew he would enjoy it.
But first we had to peel it--chip off all of the porous, roughened surface that the stone had acquired by tumbling down a riverbed. Once that was off, the glittering, almost-translucent marble was revealed beneath.
I was surprised how relatively soft the white marble was--it really didn't take a lot of muscle to chip away at the rock, just careful positioning of the pointed chisel and a good hammer swing.
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