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If, when you say the word “marble”, images of elegant sculptures immediately pop up in your imagination, know that without noticing it, you also fell in love with this amazing material.
The hero of our interview today creates not only amazing sculptures of people from marble, but also moths, birds and even pillows!
Håkon Anton Fagerås is a Norwegian sculptor. However, he is known not only for his impeccable sculptures. Fagerås has designed three coin faces for Norges Bank, the central bank of Norway.
Who is this amazing man, why did he once choose marble and how does he see the future of sculpture? We will talk about all this and more in our interview today!
Every creative person's story is unique. Everyone comes to creativity in their own way. What inspired you to become a sculptor and how did you start working in this field?
All the statues and figurative sculptures I saw as a kid felt kind of alive, sometimes almost invisible and forgotten in public spaces, but to me almost breathing, even the bad ones. Wanting to try, I felt like I could do it better, thinking how hard could it be? Turns out it was quite difficult. I started out as an artist, as an apprentice in a painter’s studio. In the studio next by there was a sculptor working, he taught me the basics of sculpting.
For centuries, artists have manipulated marble to create sculptures that capture every detail. You have also chosen marble as a material for your work. Why marble and what materials would you like to work with in the future?
I chose marble for the beauty of the stone itself, for the hundreds of million years it took to form, for the precision it enables, for the fragility it expresses, and for the skin like surface and the fabric like lightness it can appear to have.
You use a pneumatic hammer and other carving tools to turn the marble blocks into large white pillows. They are so realistic that you want to put your head on them and fall asleep. Why did you choose such an unusual concept? How did the idea come about, and what message do you want to convey to the audience through such unusual art?
The ability to turn marble into leather or drape is an amazing play with our sight and touch. It makes our eyes believe that what we think is hard can be soft. It seems impossible to create such a thing, but you debunk this misconception. What other misconceptions do you think people have about sculpture and sculptor's work? Can you debunk some of them?
There is no limit to what can be created in marble, the sculptors skill and vision is the only limit, the material itself holds endless possibilities. A guy wrote me a couple of weeks ago claiming that all marble sculptures are fake, that they are just cast marble dust, because carving complicated things in hard stone is not at all possible. It made me laugh of course, and it made me want to reply that no, not only is it possible, it’s not even as hard to do as it seems. Most beginners doing a few weeks workshop are able to carve surprisingly good sculptures.
Art has an incredible creative power. A mother of three children who was diagnosed with incurable breast cancer posed for one of your sculptures. You created this sculpture for the Norwegian Breast Cancer Society. What contribution to society would you like to convey through your work and what other socially relevant messages would you like to realize through your sculptures?
Full of perfection, strength and ideal beauty, the history of marble sculpture is filled with sculptures praising gods, wealth and power. I’d like more of the everyday, more average bodies and common experiences. Vulnerability and fragility have also been an important part of my artistic project. At the moment I am making sculptures of premature babies, life does not get more fragile than that.
The work of a sculptor seems to be something akin to magic. It is difficult for someone who is not familiar with the intricacies of craftsmanship to imagine the complexities of the process. Can you describe your creative process and how you develop a new sculpture from start to finish? What is the most difficult part of the process? And what is your favorite part?
Creating a sculpture is a labor-intensive and quite time-consuming process. How do you cope with fatigue, burnout, crises that arise on your creative path? And, how do you cope with the difficulties, failures, or mistakes that inevitably arise in the process of creating a sculpture?
The difficulties are part of the attraction, if it was easy it would be boring. No undo buttons exist in marble sculpting, and that’s what’s so fascinating about it. It requires full attention. Big mistakes while carving are extremely rare, luckily, but a change of mind often makes me wish that I had done something differently. In stone, you can’t undo anything that’s already been done, but only try to improve on what’s there. As in life I guess. Patience is essential, as the learning process is never ending, and the creation of a sculpture is time-consuming. When people ask me how I make my pieces, that’s the short answer: patience. Patience and doubt.
How has your work evolved or changed over time and how do you see the future of sculpture as an art form?
Despite the fact that each creative project is unique, the author has a special relationship with each of them. Which project was the most difficult for you, or left the most lasting impressions, or perhaps changed your creative destiny?
What advice would you give to sculptors or artists who are just starting out in this field?
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