About me (and my work)
I have been carving stone since 2006, and have studied and worked under some great teachers, including Fernando D'Astoli of Philadelphia, Ante Marinovic of Croatia, Karen Ryer of Sebastopol, CA, and Jane Jaskevich of Asheville, NC. One of my sculptures, Gargoyle, won an award in a show at Tryon, NC in 2016. Much of my work has been abstract or stylized, though in recent times, since 2017, I have sculpted figuratively in water based clay, with live models, under Kevin Chambers of KLC Studios, Atlanta.
Photo: Jake Salyers www.jakesalyers.com
How I started carving
I started carving stone on a whim in January 2006, never having created anything artistic before that. The catalyst was a red sandstone Green Man statue in a stone yard in Aschaffenburg, Germany. I had seen it a couple of weeks before and tried to buy it on impulse. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a couple of hundred pounds too heavy to lift and accordingly too expensive to ship home. So I appeared at a studio in North Atlanta shortly after the turn of the year, determined to make one myself. My teacher, Fernando D'Astoli, on finding out I was totally unversed in art or stone carving, handed me a 70 pound piece of chocolate alabaster, a hammer and a point chisel. He sent me over to a corner of his studio and said "Have at it." I started pranging the stone and chips flew. The angst of 30 years of law practice began to evanesce and I have not looked back.