Materially Speaking
58 episodes - English - Latest episode: 3 months ago -A podcast where artists tell their stories through the materials they choose.
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Episodes
Notre-Dame: An acoustic reconstruction
April 19, 2024 11:00 - 45 minutes - 104 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com On 15th April, 2019 a catastrophic fire broke out in Notre Dame Cathedral. Parisians watched in horror as the spire fell and most of the roof was destroyed. In the aftermath it became clear that a large area was contaminated with toxic dust and lead. The iconic building, which has dominated the Île de la Cité island in Paris since the Middle Ages, is a national symbol not only for the French but for people all over the world. ...
Viareggio Carnival 2024: Confetti in their blood
February 09, 2024 12:00 - 28 minutes - 65.2 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com The flags are out, the bunting too, and the red and white mascot Burlamacco is everywhere as Viareggio eagerly awaits the start of Carnival. The trees are heavy with oranges, the sweet fried dough, chiacchiere, are in the pastry shops - there’s excitement in the air! Dating back to 1873, Viareggio’s Carnival attracts thousands of visitors each year to watch the enormous, intricate papier-mâché sculptures dance their way along th...
Gabriele Gelatti: Like an insect
January 24, 2024 12:00 - 25 minutes - 58.3 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Gabriele talks to us about his upbringing in Genoa, his self-taught artistic training, his love for the history of art, and for photography. He explains the process of creating pebble mosaics, including the selection of stones and the use of lime mortar. He also discusses the importance of preserving the skills and techniques of mosaic making and the impact of climate change on the availability of materials. We met Gabriele in ...
Robin Bell: Pioneers and famous Canadians
December 13, 2023 12:00 - 22 minutes - 51.8 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com We settle down to chat outside Robin Bell’s home at a sheltered table with a spectacular view of the sea, from Pisa to La Spezia, and the never ending horizon. An exterior storage space against a yellow wall reveals shelves laden with maquettes and sculptures in various stages of completion. Robin discusses his move from working with marble to bronze and his focus on creating larger sculptures. He shares stories about some of hi...
Janice Mehlman: Come fly with me
November 29, 2023 12:00 - 21 minutes - 49.2 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com The long, narrow, glass-walled studio of Janice Mehlman is perched half way up the steep garden of her home, on a hillside near Pietrasanta. Many of her abstract photographs are hung on crisp white walls, and she welcomes us inside to look at some of her work from the last 30 years. She explains how she started as a photographer, focusing on black-and-white images of architecture. After creating an image that captured a chance m...
Steaven Richard: Artsmithing
July 19, 2023 11:00 - 19 minutes - 44.7 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Steaven Richard evolved his craft as an apprentice to several artisan blacksmiths over many years and in many countries, before establishing his own atelier in Paris specialising in artistic metalwork Soon demand for his work, from architects and designers, grew - and he needed more space. To accommodate this, he moved to a large warehouse in Valenton and expanded his team of blacksmiths and metalworkers who combine traditional ...
Xavier Montoy: Sternocera aequisignata
July 05, 2023 11:00 - 24 minutes - 55.4 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Xavier Montoy grew up in a family of doctors and was always keen on biology. When he chose an artistic route he wanted to focus attention on endangered insects to highlight how we should honour and conserve them. As part of our Paris series, Mike Axinn and I go to the 11th arrondissement of Paris to meet Xavier and see how he creates jewellery with the Sternocera beetle. Sternocera aequisignata live in Southeast Asia, especiall...
Judith Kraft: Early instrument maker
June 14, 2023 11:00 - 25 minutes - 59.1 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Judith’s workshop is in the 10th arrondissement, tucked away in a courtyard behind huge iron gates where tall white buildings house workshops, and motorbikes and cars are squeezed against the walls. There are lines of plants in terracotta pots and a small white dog. Judith greets us in her office where a history of her instruments line one wall – some with painted gold detail and others with fine marquetry work in wood. She mak...
Sylvain Maenhout: Forging a new life
May 26, 2023 11:00 - 24 minutes - 55.9 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Sylvain always loved cooking and when he discovered a passion for working with metal and wood he trained so he could create kitchen knives for chefs. Mike Axinn and I travelled to Paris to meet four artisans. In the first of our series we talk with Sylvain Maenhout who took the decision to retrain as an artisan in his late 30s. Becoming an artisan has given him the ability to work from home and have a more balanced, family-centr...
Trailer: Paris Transformations
May 24, 2023 11:00 - 4 minutes - 10.6 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com This spring Mike Axinn and I went to Paris to see how artisans are able to practise their craft in a vibrant, urban setting. We wanted to discover more about the relevance of traditional skills in a world of 21st century technologies. First we met Sylvain Maenhout who gave up a conventional career and moved his family out of central Paris to devote his life to making kitchen knives. Release date: 26 May 2023 We also spoke with...
Ron Mehlman: An artist of many parts
April 26, 2023 11:00 - 28 minutes - 65.3 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Ron Mehlman grew up in Brooklyn and came to Pietrasanta in the 1980s. No materials are off limits in his quest for creating sculpture infused with spirit and life. As we settle down to talk by his warm log-burning stove, Ron describes the two walls of his studio with their alphabet of colourful abstract sculptures – created from stone, wood and bronze – each one perched on its own individual shelf. The project started as a way o...
Nicola Stagetti: We can move the mountain
March 22, 2023 12:00 - 14 minutes - 34.3 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Nicola Stagetti of Stagetti Studios in Pietrasanta, and Robin Sethi, the project coordinator from India, describe the creation of Pramashwar the Infinite. Artisan and studio head Nicola Stagetti spoke to us from his studios, where historic busts line the shelves and the familiar roar of his robot emanates from the next room. Nicola completed his art education in Pietrasanta and went on to become an apprentice in his father’s wor...
John Greer: Art is a language
March 08, 2023 12:00 - 35 minutes - 81 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com John Greer finds art gives him an invaluable structure in life. Expressing himself in form is more important than a visual language. Professor of sculpture for 26 years at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, John was the catalyst for the ‘Halifax Sculpture’ movement in the 1990s which was rooted in minimalism and conceptualism. Inspiration for his sculpture often comes from Ancient Celtic stones and Greek scul...
Magic at the Carnevale: Artisans of Viareggio
February 15, 2023 12:00 - 22 minutes - 50.9 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Carnevale originated in pagan rituals celebrating winter turning to spring. For Christians it offers a brief hiatus before the rigours of Lent – hence the name ‘carnem levare’ – which means ‘to take away meat’. This is a time to create chaos, to question and poke fun at authority and, for the artisans of Viareggio, the opportunity to say something meaningful to the public and get them involved. La Cittadella del Carnevale, just ...
Silvano Cattaï: Into the Light
February 08, 2023 12:00 - 34 minutes - 78.2 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Silvano Cattaï born in Belgium, of Italian parentage, came to be an artist in Italy by way of making films in New York. After years in sculpture he finally came back to painting but this time with a sculptural angle, using a plasma gun and paint on aluminium. Silvano’s studio houses his powerful plasma equipment, and protective gear. On the walls are metal-working tools, shelves with tubes of oil paints. Around the studio are ne...
Vanessa Paschakarnis: Feel with your eyes
January 25, 2023 12:00 - 32 minutes - 75.5 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com German born Vanessa Paschakarnis migrated to Nova Scotia before coming to Pietrasanta in northern Italy. Hers is a philosophical approach to sculpture. I met Vanessa through Californian photographer, Gail Skoff, who took a special series of photos of Vanessa, which you can see on this page. In front of her studio-home is a dusty yard filled with her work. She works in large series’ and themes include horned and winged beings, b...
Alvisé Boccanegra: Venice — A floating miracle
December 14, 2022 12:00 - 36 minutes - 83.8 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com In the third of our Venice series, Mike and I are meeting furniture restorer Alvisé Boccanegra who trained in restoration in the workshops of the Church of San Marco. He tells how he repaired a crucifix after Venice flooded in 2019. Alvisé’s workshop is in the heart of San Polo on the ground floor of the building where he was born. Inside it smells of wood and linseed oil and there are neat shelves of brightly coloured powdered ...
Gabriele Gmeiner: Venice — Walking in their shoes
November 30, 2022 12:00 - 36 minutes - 82.6 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com In this, the second of our Venice series, Mike Axinn and I met Austrian born shoemaker Gabriele Gmeiner who makes high quality made-to-measure shoes in her workshop at Campiello del Sol. She speaks of her craft, her journey from Austria and why she chose Venice. As we turned into Gabriele’s courtyard we found her sitting at a large wooden desk by her shop window, wearing a work apron, and smiling. A shoe was jammed between her k...
Piero Dri: Venice — Rowing through time
November 16, 2022 12:00 - 38 minutes - 87.2 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Piero Dri is the fourth and youngest remer in Venice, making oars and oarlocks - or in Italian ‘forcolai’. Since he learnt to row aged 4, rowing has been his passion. I came to Venice with sound specialist Mike Axinn for a special Venice series of Materially Speaking, during the Homo Faber celebration of artisans, in April 2022. We met three young artisans who are now bringing a fresh energy to the community with a particular ey...
Trailer: If you love Venice
November 14, 2022 13:00 - 4 minutes - 9.78 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com In the Spring of 2022, sound specialist Mike Axinn and I went to Venice during Homo Faber, an event created by the Michelangelo Foundation to celebrate master craftsmanship. We wanted to discover more about the community of younger artisans in Venice - what brought them there, and why they liked it. First we met Piero Dri, a remer who makes oars and oarlocks, or as the Italians call them, ‘forcolai’. Since he learnt to row aged...
Marianna Blier: Home
November 02, 2022 12:00 - 34 minutes - 79.9 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Marianna Blier was born in Astrakhan, Russia but moved to Vienna in 2007. She now divides her time between her atelier in Vienna, Austria and her marble studios in Carrara, Italy. Eminent Californian photographer Gail Skoff introduced Marianna, and when I followed Gail on one of her photography trips, Marianna was standing on a table top, in a large workshop in the centre of Carrara. Wearing goggles and earmuffs she was leaning ...
Daphné Du Barry: What is beauty?
October 19, 2022 11:00 - 28 minutes - 64.2 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Celebrated figurative sculptor Daphné Du Barry speaks seven languages and modelled for Salvador Dali in her 20s. She discusses her bronzes, her love of learning and her faith. Born in Holland, Daphné studied at Munich University and afterwards, at McGill in Canada. Later she enrolled at the Sorbonne in Paris to study modern literature. She had a brief career as a chanteuse in Paris and then became an artist. She studied drawing...
Helaine Blumenfeld OBE: The language of sculpture
October 05, 2022 11:00 - 34 minutes - 79.8 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Renowned sculptor Helaine Blumenfeld continually re-invents herself in her search for a vocabulary of form. Helaine’s work communicates on all levels: visual, tactile and emotional. She is well-known for her public art and her sculptures often seems weightless as she strives to portray something spiritual. Her work is a continuous journey of discovery and growth. Helaine tells us about becoming an artist, her unstoppable urge t...
Nilda Comas: It was just a dream
July 13, 2022 11:00 - 55 minutes - 127 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Nilda Comas knew she’d be an artist from a very young age, and now she’ll be the first Hispanic master sculptor to create a statue for the US National Statuary Hall. She describes her journey, from a childhood in Puerto Rico to coming to Italy and learning carving skills from the artisans in Pietrasanta. Following the shocking Charleston church shooting in 2015, the State of Florida decided to change one of the two sculptures re...
on form: On stone
June 15, 2022 11:00 - 45 minutes - 104 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com on form is an exhibition of sculptures in stone held every other summer at Asthall Manor, Oxfordshire. Discover what goes on during its installation. Creative director, Rosie Pearson tells us about the finials by Anthony Turner on her gateposts which she commissioned in 2000, and how these sowed the seeds for creating on form. We hear from the curator, Anna Greenacre, about how she and Rosie choose artists through studio visits...
Flavia Robalo: Dreaming
December 20, 2021 12:00 - 20 minutes - 46.9 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com From a very young age Flavia drew and painted. She was always asking everyone around her for paper and colours because drawing was her language and her refuge. It was her way of processing everything that happened to her, much as some people use writing. Flavia is inspired by her childhood and her work often ends up being self-portraits. Even if she tries to invent different characters behind her pieces, they always end up being...
Veronica Fonzo: Growth
December 15, 2021 12:00 - 26 minutes - 61.1 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Veronica was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where her mother taught drawing and painting. She learned alongside her mother’s students, discovered clay and soon started creating small animals and other subjects from nature. By the time she was a teenager it was clear that art was her path. She came to Pietrasanta, along with childhood friend Flavia Robalo, to learn how to carve marble. They fell in love with the area and when M...
Filippo dalle Luche: Key to the future
October 27, 2021 11:00 - 15 minutes - 36.6 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Filippo is a vivacious 24-year-old student at Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara which was founded in 1769 by Maria Teresa Cybo, princess of Carrara, to support the marble industry. The Academy was founded with two schools: sculpture and architecture, but over the centuries painting, scenography, decoration and graphics were added. However, Filippo has chosen to specialise in the most recent addition: new art technologies, founde...
Julia Vance: Letters and words
October 20, 2021 11:00 - 28 minutes - 65 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com With abstract calligraphic lines, Julia Vance creates sculptural forms in white Italian Statuario marble. She tells us how she created a modern altar, font and pulpit for a new church in Hønefoss, Norway, which replaced the previous church which had burnt down. In this episode, Julia describes a piece she was finishing called Passage to Knowledge. Carved in black granite, this monumental sculpture is like a huge letter Q, signif...
Guus Jooss: Serious play
July 14, 2021 14:22 - 23 minutes - 53.4 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Guus Jooss lives in Holland but comes to Pietrasanta in Italy for several months a year to work in marble. Guus used to work as a museum teacher and researcher in the Netherlands when he wasn’t creating his own art. Before that, he went to an art academy in Utrecht for a year, but mostly learnt about sculpture through doing the work himself. He also did some teaching and found himself describing for his students skills that he d...
Badriah Hamelink: Absolute power
July 07, 2021 11:00 - 23 minutes - 54.4 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Badriah Hamelink comes from a family of Dutch intellectuals. Her mother is a professor, while her father is the poet and writer Jaques Hamelink. Her grandmother founded the first Arab study centre in the Netherlands. Her own artistic development however has leant more towards the intuitive than the rational, and when she followed her nose to Pietrasanta she sought mentoring from the artist Armen Agop. Badriah also credits Martin...
Neil Ferber: Carvers or modellers
June 30, 2021 11:00 - 22 minutes - 51.7 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Born in Wales, Neil Ferber started his creative life making models and objects in his parents’ garden shed. After art college he made his way to Italy with his wife, writer Kathleen Jones, where he discovered the artist community working in marble and based himself in several of the studios there. At the time of our interview he was packing-up from Studio La Polveriera in Pietrasanta and now mainly works in Cumbria at his Mill st...
Cynthia Sah: We are all connected
June 23, 2021 11:00 - 32 minutes - 73.6 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Cynthia Sah was born in Hong Kong and studied in the USA. She first came to Italy in 1978 to study and came back soon after to learn with the artisans. She has stayed ever since and now works in a studio complex with her partner, Nicolas Bertoux. Inspired by the form, movement and colours that nature gives us, Cynthia tells how she always looks for the spine in a piece. She loves how the energy of a wave – of water, sound or win...
Anne Shingleton: Animal magic
June 16, 2021 11:00 - 35 minutes - 81.9 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com After studying zoology, then going to art school in Bournemouth, Anne tells how it was the traditional teaching of Signorina Simi in Florence that made her feel she was finally in the right place. Anne stayed in touch with her fellow students who learnt with the artist and teacher Nera Simi (1890–1987) alongside her in the 1980s. Even when it was seen as out of fashion, Nera Simi continued to teach by the atelier method having l...
Nicolas Bertoux: Red Donkey
June 09, 2021 11:00 - 32 minutes - 73.7 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Originally from Paris, Nicolas first came to Carrara with his father, also a sculptor, who was working on a monumental piece at Henraux. Now he lives and works in Seravezza, northern Tuscany with his partner Cynthia Sah, in an extraordinary pre-industrial building which was once an historic sawmill, where marble was cut for the very first time by water-powered machinery. He was drawn to move to the area not because of the studi...
Jaya Schuerch: Living Stone
June 02, 2021 11:00 - 27 minutes - 62.4 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Co-founder of Studio Pescarella near Pietrasanta, Jaya was born in California, moved to Switzerland with her family as a teenager, and later lived in Hawaii where she worked in papier-mâché, lava and basalt. In 1986 she came to Carrara attracted by the marble quarries. Jaya says ‘it’s important to me that my sculptures feel alive, pulling out the aliveness in the stone, showing the absolute connection that stone has for me with l...
Emmanuel Fillion: The art of cutting stone
May 26, 2021 11:00 - 42 minutes - 97 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Born in Soissons, France, Emmanuel went to trade school at the age of 16 to learn how to renovate historical monuments by hand, specialising in granite. He spent some years restoring churches, cathedrals and monuments all over France until he felt the calling to create his own work as an artist. He says women and the female form are a constant source of inspiration. Dance is a strong theme in his work and began with a homage he ...
Lucy Dickens: The way she sees it
May 19, 2021 11:00 - 36 minutes - 82.8 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Lucy Dickens is an artist and illustrator, whose works exudes humour. Close friends since the age of three, Lucy and Sarah ramble and percolate over Lucy’s upcoming show. As a great, great granddaughter of writer Charles Dickens, writing plays an important part in Lucy’s life. Her paintings often have a narrative quality, leaving you wondering what went before, or what will happen next. As well as humour, her recent work contain...
Back again: Series 2
May 14, 2021 11:02 - 2 minutes - 5.87 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Welcome back to a second series of Materially Speaking – where artists and artisans tell us their stories through the materials they choose. In these snapshot stories, they tell us about their journey to become an artist, and the inspirations for their work. Along the way, they explain why they have chosen different materials to work with at different stages of their careers.
Epilogue: Series 1
August 28, 2020 11:00 - 2 minutes - 5.47 MBMaterially Speaking began with interviews from artists and artisans working near Pietrasanta in northern Italy, where generations of artists have come since Michelangelo first arrived over 500 years ago to source marble for his Pietà. We are taking a break for the summer but we have already started recording new interviews and look forward to sharing more artists’ stories later this year. We will continue our conversations with artists who work, or have worked, around the area of P...
Sollai Cartwright: Finding inspiration everywhere
July 31, 2020 11:00 - 24 minutes - 55.4 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Sollai Cartwright takes inspiration from everything around him creating both abstract and figurative work. Sollai talks about his favourite stone, Bianco P, and how it responds to chisels while holding its form. He speaks about the historical resources of the area around Pietrasanta and of the extensive range of historical tools available, especially at the renowned Milani Tools shop. He describes how each tool has a different ...
Jacob Cartwright: Embrace
July 14, 2020 23:00 - 26 minutes - 60 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Born into an artistic family in Australia, Jacob has been living in Italy, on and off, since he was two-years-old. He began his musical training very young and brings these sensibilities to his art. All the music in this episode was composed by Jacob. The Embrace series was inspired by a hug Jacob’s wife Jacqueline gave him. He explains that when his wife gave him a hug he saw a certain form. This form became a piece and this p...
Christian Lange: A devil’s tool
July 01, 2020 11:00 - 20 minutes - 28.4 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Christian Lange apprenticed as a chiseller in Freiburg, Germany, and started out as a stonemason restoring churches before coming to Pietrasanta to try his luck as an artist. Then he fell in love and his work took a slightly different direction. He decided to build his career as an artisan and now creates ornamental pieces and sacred art, as well as collaborating with artists to realise their visions in marble. He talks about t...
Rita Meier: Walking on marble
June 17, 2020 11:00 - 22 minutes - 51.8 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Rita Meier learned the direct carving technique from artisans and the international community of artists in the studios around Pietrasanta. In this episode she talks about the grades of hardness of various stones and describes the process of carving. Inspired by organic shapes, Rita discusses her seed pods series which she sees as the carriers and protectors of future lives, always perfectly adapted to survive in their environm...
Neal Barab: A life of their own
June 05, 2020 11:00 - 32 minutes - 75.3 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Californian artist Neal Barab says his work is variously influenced by Mexican pre-Colombian art, art from the Cyclades, African art, Japanese anime such as My Neighbor Totoro by Hayao Miyazaki and cartoons. Recently he’s been working on a series of ‘personaggi’, or characters – human and animal – carved from multicoloured stones, some painted. Neal says ‘I’m wanting my pieces to be not just sculptures but living creatures.’ Th...
Almuth Tebbenhoff: Bigger than I am
May 20, 2020 11:00 - 19 minutes - 27.5 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com When Almuth Tebbenhoff came to London in the late 1960s she started from scratch: learning a new language, finding a job and studying to be a potter. A decade later, a lucky meeting with Eduardo Paolozzi gave her the chance to study at the Royal College of Art where drawing classes, lectures and conversations with other artists led her from the world of ceramics to a wider range of materials. Almuth first came to Pietrasanta t...
Michael Francis Cartwright: All materials are equal
May 06, 2020 11:00 - 23 minutes - 53.7 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com After what he describes as a ‘very free’ art education, Australian-born Michael Francis Cartwright first came to Carrara in Italy 35 years ago with his wife Shona Nunan. Michael says ‘the main thing in my life is about creating something the whole time’ and discusses the many mediums he employs. Michael likes drawing, painting, printmaking, working with beautiful red hardwoods and carving marble. He also works with found object...
Martin Foot: What’s a mistake?
April 29, 2020 11:00 - 23 minutes - 32.7 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Liverpudlian Martin Foot always loved learning and since childhood dreamt of carving in stone. At the age of 13 he worked weekends for his uncle, a stone mason. At 19 he took a one-way ticket to Australia to try his luck and found himself carving in the company of Italians, who spoke of home. This sowed the seeds in Martin’s mind of some day working there himself. In 1996 he finally came to Italy, arriving in Pietrasanta at the ...
Shona Nunan: Balance
April 22, 2020 11:00 - 22 minutes - 51.9 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Shona Nunan and her husband, Michael Francis Cartwright, left Australia for Italy to tell the world, and themselves, that they were committed to being artists. They arrived in Carrara, near the white marble mountains 35 years ago, without even enough money to eat the workers’ lunches. She tells her story, from peering longingly into the bronze foundries of Pietrasanta to finally realising her dreams. During Shona’s career, recu...
Eilis O’Connell: Obsessed by scale
April 15, 2020 11:00 - 21 minutes - 49.8 MBSee pictures and read more on materiallyspeaking.com Eilis O’Connell studied at art school in Cork, Ireland in the early 1970s. She was fascinated by making something small and then realising it big. Here she shares with us the amazing range of the materials she’s worked with and her new-found admiration for marble. Eilis says ‘I just love experimenting, as a natural thing. I’m a real messer. I like to see what a material can do and play with it.’ She touches upon a wide variety...