Sollai Cartwright:

Inspiration from everywhere

Sollai Cartwright: 00:18

I had this vision. I saw myself covered in marble dust, walking through the streets of Italy feeling proud and had to go check it out. Coming to Pietrasanta, it’s very inspiring for anyone who’s considering being an artist. There’s just so much industry and focus on art and ancient art. I turned up a bit broke and lost in Italy about ten years ago, and when you come through, you just wanna be part of it.

Sollai Cartwright: 00:55

It’s like going to Hollywood if you’re an actor, think, you know, there’s just so much so much energy around it and you wanna be part of it.

Sarah Monk: 01:14

Hi. This is Materially Speaking, where artists tell their stories through the materials they choose. In this series, we’ve been talking to artists in a community near Pietrasanta Santa in Northern Italy who are working in marble. They’re here because of the large range of stone available and also to take advantage of working with the very skilled artisans. The last sculptor in this series is Sollai Cartwright, an Australian artist from a family of sculptors.

Sarah Monk: 01:39

His parents and brother have also told their stories to Materially Speaking. I met Sollai and his wife, Danica, in the central piazza in Pietrasanta. Around us, the cafe tables filled up and emptied with children and families enjoying a morning break. After the midday church bells, we were also joined by workers coming out for a sandwich. You can hear the productive sounds of something being built with a saw in the background.

Sarah Monk: 02:05

There’s always something new being created in Pietrasanta. Later, I went over to Soleil’s workspace on the edge of town. He had an outside area with an earth floor and a corrugated iron roof supported by metal poles. In the middle of his workspace, a work in marble stood waiting for his attention on his wooden cavaletto, or little horse.

Sollai Cartwright: 02:27

My name’s Sollai Cartwright, and I’m 30 years old. I’m from Australia.

Sarah Monk: 02:32

How would you describe the work you do generally?

Sollai Cartwright: 02:34

Basically, it’s abstract, but I like to take inspiration from everything, like the human figure and nature. I’d say I’m very inspired by basic elemental forms. Really, it’s a exploration of marble. So it’s about finding what the marble has to give, finding a dialogue with the stone. It’s a partnership in creation, so I try not to impose too much on the marble, try to get a connectivity with the work so that we can inspire each other into something different.

Sarah Monk: 03:01

Do you know where they’re going or are they going into galleries?

Sollai Cartwright: 03:03

I’m collected privately and I send my work to galleries as well.

Sarah Monk: 03:08

Where are they?

Sollai Cartwright: 03:09

I have at the moment two galleries in Australia, so one in Sydney and one in Melbourne. That’s Harvey Gallery in Sydney and Art Advisory in Melbourne. I also have a large piece going into Sculptures by the Sea in Sydney, which is Australia’s biggest sculpture exhibition, and it’s for the public. So it’s really beautiful. It’s along that string of beaches down in Southern Sydney.

Sollai Cartwright: 03:32

That’s my where my work’s going at the moment.

Sarah Monk: 03:34

So I think your parents were artists. Can you tell me a little bit about how it was growing up with them in Australia and when the connection with Italy started?

Sollai Cartwright: 03:42

Mum and dad have been artists since forever. They’ve always been artists. They met at art school. Both of their fathers were artists as well. So that really, I think, transferred down into the family.

Sollai Cartwright: 03:54

I mean, our backyard was a studio and there was old sculptures strewn across the floor and we had access to great tools to make improvised weaponry and and toys and things like that. So that was always part of of growing up. They moved to Italy when I was about 14, I think. You know, I came with them sort of on and off doing correspondence schooling. They got a place in Bande De Luca, near Luca.

Sollai Cartwright: 04:24

So that’s really close to Pietrasanta and for me it was really easy to discover marble here. But I didn’t immediately wanna go down that track. I think it was too obvious and I guess like all young people trying to rebel. I don’t think there’s much to rebel against. I sort of started off, I wanted to be a writer and I was doing lots of writing, but that’s really sort of stationary sort of work.

Sollai Cartwright: 04:50

Very exhausting for, I think, young energetic people to do.

Sarah Monk: 04:54

So then you came you came over more officially. How old were you when you came having tried out other things?

Sollai Cartwright: 05:00

So I arrived here at about 20.

Sarah Monk: 05:03

So did you apprentice 21 or did you start on your own?

Sollai Cartwright: 05:06

It started out a little bit rough. I came here and I stole dad’s tools and I rented out a studio for a little while. Dad spent a day with me teaching me how to use the tools and that was great and that was a really good start and I began carving. Then I met a guy called Douglas Robinson and he actually spent a lot of time with me teaching me some of the finer details of carving, how to how to really bring forward a form and challenged me a lot in discovering form. You know, I spent a lot of time planning a sculpture and all this sort of stuff and he’d come in and say, what are you doing?

Sollai Cartwright: 05:41

Forget about it. Just carve, man. I don’t know. He’s the same same with any sort of artistic question I have. I can bring to Doug and he’ll give me a very simple answer on how to go forward.

Sollai Cartwright: 05:52

I think it was just the other week I was trying to learn painting and I taking on all these difficult tasks in painting and he said, You don’t need anything, Silay, just paint man, you’ve got it inside you. So it’s that kind of basic sage advice that really helps.

Sarah Monk: 06:14

Can you say sort of generally how big you work in what are we looking at? Are they round forms? Do you like edges? Are you It’s not figurative, I’m guessing. It is abstract, you said, isn’t it?

Sollai Cartwright: 06:25

It’s abstract and figurative. So sometimes it’s very figurative, but I try to morph figurative over into something a bit more like a landscape. So I want my figures to be more than just a figure, I want it to invoke spirit, more interesting forms for me. You know, I want to explore form in different ways. Figure’s a nice anchor for that sort of thing.

Sollai Cartwright: 06:50

In terms of size, my largest piece is two by two meters height and width. And my smallest pieces are sort of like a fist, you know, fist size.

Sarah Monk: 07:02

What are the stones you like to work with?

Sollai Cartwright: 07:03

I really like Italian marble, particularly Bianco P and Statuario. I guess they’re really obvious answers because probably anyone working in marble would will say this. It’s just such beautiful, perfect marble. Statuaria is really clean. It’s a clean marble. It’s mostly white.

Sollai Cartwright: 07:22

That’s not the real draw for me. For me, it’s the inner glow that it gets. It’s very sort of translucent. Sun will penetrate into the marble and on a fine form you’ll see that it goes right through the marble.

Sollai Cartwright: 07:34

I’d always thought marble was sort of just magic and I attributed all its qualities to magic but it turns out that light absorbs into the marble and then refracts within the crystalline structure and then shoots back out. So it gets an inner glow. Even in a really dull light, you can see all the forms of marble. That’s why it’s really special, that glow, a warm glow.

Sarah Monk: 07:58

And what about other stones or other marbles apart from the Italian? Have you have you experimented?

Sollai Cartwright: 08:03

Yeah. I’ve done a lot of work, especially in the beginning when I when I was starting out in carving. I just wanted to experiment with everything because, you know, wow, the finish on this black marble is beautiful and wow, this pink looks amazing. I really loved the high sheen polish and but as I’ve gone on, I realized that the real joy of carving is in the process. So in that way, I want a really beautiful marble to carve.

Sollai Cartwright: 08:29

That’s the real secret of Italian marble is that it’s made for the carver. There’s two really famous marbles in Italy to carve, that’s Statuario and Biancoppi. Most people are hooked on Statuario because it’s got this inner globe and it’s really beautiful. But for me, the Bianco P is maybe more important because the way that it reacts to the chisels is fantastic. The way it holds its form is amazing.

Sollai Cartwright: 08:52

The more you you look at the the process of carving, the more it relates historically. I get my tools locally from Milani, which is a ancient smithy. They’ve been they know they’ve been smithing for five hundred years. How much longer? Well, you know, these guys were making the tools for Michelangelo.

Sollai Cartwright: 09:10

It’s really cool. But every tool they have has a relationship to a different marble. So you can get different hammers that that relate to the the softness of a stone but also the the temperance of the chisel. So that becomes this whole understanding with different tools. The tools react with the marble in a different way.

Sollai Cartwright: 09:30

And for me, Bianco P is just spectacular in that regard. It’s it’s the lesser known of the well known marbles, but it’s it’s fantastic.

Sarah Monk: 09:38

And is that a marble that can live outside? Because I know Statuario can’t.

Sollai Cartwright: 09:42

They they all can, but they all age. There’s also a cold. So up north, marble cracks in the deep freeze. Minute cracks become big cracks and you’ll lose your peace. But I love the way marble ages, you know, stains and you look at the old works in Italy and they don’t care so much if it’s always clean.

Sollai Cartwright: 10:00

They let it age and become part of the earth again, you know. I think that’s what marble’s trying to do anyway. It comes from a mountain and it’s beautiful. It starts off beautifully and then man comes along and turns it into a square and it’s just longing to be part of the earth again, longing to be gorgeous. So I think it’s nice to to carve a piece back into something lovely and then to let it go back to the earth, let it become old.

Sarah Monk: 10:22

So do you have an opinion about our environmental impact on taking the marble?

Sollai Cartwright: 10:27

I think it’s a a travesty. It’s it’s really sad. I mean, look at the mountains and it’s this beautiful organic line against the blue sky that suddenly comes this sharp edge from the quarry. It’s lost all all its natural beauty. But I don’t I don’t think this is the carver’s fault.

Sollai Cartwright: 10:45

I think, you know, we’re using point 005% of of what’s being pulled out of there. The real issue is these huge blocks that they take out of the mountain, they cut down, they turn it into bathroom tiles, it gets shipped all over the world, people put it in their their house, five years later it looks dirty so they pull it down again or they want it black instead of white and that’s that’s the real problem.

Sarah Monk: 11:25

How do you start a new piece? And do you take commissions or work generally creating for yourself and or a show?

Sollai Cartwright: 11:32

As an artist, I consider myself in a state of continuous employment. I’m always on the job, in other words. So if I’m not sculpting, I’m drawing. And if I’m not drawing, I’m reading something inspiring or going for a walk. It’s there’s always a thing in the back of your mind is that, look at that, I need that for my work.

Sollai Cartwright: 11:55

So how I start a piece is kind of somewhere around there. It’s somewhere around, you know, lunchtime, eating something delicious. Then what I like to do is I draw. So I get my papers together and I draw a thousand weird things, a lot of which, you know, I don’t want anyone to ever see. Then I’ll take those ideas and those feelings to a fresh block of marble and I get a bit of charcoal and I start drawing on the form.

Sollai Cartwright: 12:26

The charcoal rubs off really easily and by the end, you’ve got a really dirty block of marble, but I keep going over different lines. And then, I’ll find a form that I really like and I’ll start carving and I’ll cut into it. But of course, when you cut into it, you lose the drawing. So I’m really quickly making something different which works for me because you know, every piece should be different. Every piece should be a new exploration and a new discovery.

Sollai Cartwright: 12:52

So that drawing that I did on the marble was a finished piece, you know, it was a finished piece of artwork and now that I’ve started the marble, the drawing blows away because it’s just charcoal and I’m sort of left with an impression into the stone. Then the stone starts speaking, demanding its own thing and it starts growing of its own accord and wants to be something different to to a drawing. It wants to be a sculpture. The piece has to be inspired by the marble as well. The marble has to have a say.

Sollai Cartwright: 13:48

Every part of my day affects my work. That’s why it’s really important to live a really beautiful life because it’s gonna be in the work. It’s gonna reflect. So I make sure I have a really good time.

Sarah Monk: 14:01

Can you tell me about one or if you prefer two pieces that you’re proud of, and their stories?

Sollai Cartwright: 14:07

I’m very proud of my largest work, was about four tons of marble. That really broke through a lot of stuff for me, a lot of hours and a lot of time. It was half a year working on one piece between eight and ten hours a day. To do that every day really turns you into something different. It’s like athletic training I think.

Sollai Cartwright: 14:27

You become more than just a simple carver. You’re really able to spend long hours being part of something which is I think important if you want to stay in that zone for a long time. You need to build up that muscle. So that was really important for me. I guess other pieces are pieces that change my language.

Sollai Cartwright: 14:47

You develop a language, a way in which you talk through your material, but that has to change, otherwise it becomes stale and stops working for you and stops being art. You’re just copying yourself and it’s boring. So when you have these great breakthroughs in your language, just have a piece that really changes. I don’t know, it’ll hit you, you go, wow, it’s different, but it’s fantastic and it’s me. That’s the best feeling.

Sollai Cartwright: 15:11

They’re the best works. You know, they happen every, you know, 10 pieces or something, you have this this great feeling from a work that changes everything about your style or yes. So yeah. Lots of proud pieces. But also, I’m really proud of beautiful stone.

Sollai Cartwright: 15:27

When you see a beautiful stone shining in in your form, it’s spectacular. I’m proud of it all.

Sarah Monk: 15:46

What tools do you use? Have you started to change the tools you use?

Sollai Cartwright: 15:50

Yeah. I think in the beginning, I used a lot of grinders and things that were about cutting corners in workload. I think it’s really natural because you’re working with stone and there’s a lot of weight to move. Stone can be very resistant, but what I’ve realized is that’s an imposing way to work with marble. That’s you demanding a form from a piece of marble.

Sollai Cartwright: 16:10

So that’s you drawing a piece, having a model and cutting it out like it’s paper. But marble wants to speak, so doing it in the traditional way with hammers and chisels, you know, a chisel doesn’t just blast its way through the marble, doesn’t grind it out, it follows its forms. So the form becomes discovered and appreciated. That’s a slower way to work, but it’s more beautiful. And because you do it like that, maybe it is faster, you know, you get more done because you’re following the flow and you’re following the energy.

Sollai Cartwright: 16:41

As far as technology goes, there’s so much out there and it keeps changing. There’s laser machines that blast out the form or whatever you want. But I use an air compressor and that basically goes up into a piston which works like a miniature hammer and I put a chisel on the end of that so it’s just a faster rhythm. That’s great for getting things done quickly and you’re still very connected but there’s a lot of vibration in the body so you can actually get some damage. If I have the time picking up a hammer, you don’t get injured, just get strong and that’s a beautiful feeling.

Sollai Cartwright: 17:16

Yeah. Connecting with a stone like that. And connecting with these ancient tools, you start having a collaboration not only with the marble but collaborating with the different strengths of iron and the way it’s been heat treated and different shapes in the tools and different hammers and that’s really fun.

Sarah Monk: 17:31

Wonderful. So in what way do you think the travelling that you’ve done has affected or inspired your work because you’ve lived in Australia, Italy and Berlin as well.

Sollai Cartwright: 17:42

Every country has a real strong spirit. Australia has this ancient, ancient spirit where the earth is is worn, the mountains are are ground and yeah, it’s ancient. So I mean that definitely has an an inspiration when I’m in Australia. Find myself working more simplistic forms that are really thoroughly nature inspired birds, fish, this sort of thing. When I’m in Berlin, which is where I have my main studio, I am inspired by people.

Sollai Cartwright: 18:12

So I’m often doing figurative works, trying to balance figurative with nature. In Italy, I’m not sure. I think I’m inspired by very raw, abundant life. High living. I think my my work’s often really happy, free and happy in Italy.

Sarah Monk: 18:28

How did you get to Berlin?

Sollai Cartwright: 18:30

My wife at the time was an acrobat and dancer. We’re trying to find a city that we could both work in. You know, I kinda just wanted to be in Pietrasanta for the Marbel, but Danica got a job in Berlin and and I happened to get a a large commission. So we went over there and immediately found these amazing studios right in the center of town. It’s called the BBK.

Sollai Cartwright: 18:51

It’s a BBK. It’s a old factory from before the war. And they divided it up into all these studio spaces for large scale sculpture manufacturing. So they have a huge stone area, a huge woodworking area, huge plaster area, steel area and each of these areas has artisans who work for the artists. And it’s all government subsidized and it’s just a fantastic way to be supported.

Sollai Cartwright: 19:17

You know, we got to Berlin and there’s all this amazing opportunity to work, so we got into it really easily.

Danica Hilton: 19:32

My name is Danica Hilton. I’m originally from Sydney, Australia, and I was an acrobat with Cirque du Soleil for many years. Before that, I was a gymnast and a trampolinist, and I competed all around the world. I was on the path to the Olympics. At the end of my competitive career, I joined the Cirque du Soleil, finally.

Danica Hilton: 19:51

I enjoyed my gymnastic career, but for someone who starts when they’re seven years old, it’s some serious discipline, and joining Cirque du Soleil was, yeah, beautiful, empowering. I was able to be free.

Sarah Monk: 20:03

So how do you meet Sollai?

Danica Hilton: 20:04

We actually met at Cirque du Soleil. I joined Cirque du Soleil, I had this big dream of, you know, joining this company, and then I meet my Soleil there. I meet my son there. He was a carpenter, and we met stage right.

Sarah Monk: 20:17

How did you come to work together?

Danica Hilton: 20:19

We originally went to Berlin. Soleil had a really big commission, and I also joined a dance company. We were having a lot of fun in Berlin. Then I sadly had a really big injury, and it all kind of suddenly came to a close quickly. It’s a new life now.

Danica Hilton: 20:37

I’m with Sollai and it’s always very artful. And now I’m kind of working for him. I’m his manager almost.

Sarah Monk: 20:44

What are the things that you already do for Sollai’s art and how do you see that growing?

Danica Hilton: 20:48

Yeah. I send artwork around the world. If there’s an exhibition that he’s preparing for, I make a catalogue, the art books and price lists and and all those little things that he just doesn’t have time for anymore. Look after the social media. This is everything from Facebook and Instagram to trolling the web to see where we need to be, when we need to be there, who we can present our work to.

Danica Hilton: 21:12

I compiled information and we work on this together. Actually, Sollai is a beautiful writer, so he’ll do most of the writing, but I’ll do the gathering of photographs and videos and all this other side is what I’m doing. I have a degree in business and art management, so it comes naturally for me.

Sarah Monk: 21:34

Have you got any advice you give to a young person who’s embarking on life as an artist and thinking of working in stone?

Sollai Cartwright: 21:43

Yeah. Find mentors. Anyone who you respect as an artist and listen to them and look at their work and make a relationship, become friends, learn everything you can learn and learn from the artisans. That and just work really hard and consider every part of your life as work. So if you’re resting, make sure it’s resting well.

Sollai Cartwright: 22:04

Look at art books, go to the museum, be inspired, go out of your way, be a full time artist and be in it all the time. Go out of your way to be inspired. Eat well, sleep well, but really find inspiration in everything that you can and then you you’ll make up. I also think that when you make a piece, it’s not really yours. If if I make a a sculpture, it’s I don’t wanna say that it’s my sculpture.

Sollai Cartwright: 22:44

And, even the same for a collector. I’ll let them I’ll let anyone have the right to put walls around my work, but at the end of the day, the a piece of artwork belongs to anyone who looks at it. And I think that as an artist, when I’m carving, I’m in a spiritual process where work doesn’t finish. Our work can never finish, but I can bring it to the point where that process can pass on to a viewer. And just from looking at a piece, they’re a part of it. And I see that as my job.

Sarah Monk: 23:31

So thanks to Sollai Cartwright. You can see his work on his website at sollai.com, And follow him on Instagram @soley.cartwright.sculptor. For photographs of all the work discussed in this series, check out our Instagram or our website, materiallyspeaking.com. And if you’ve enjoyed this series, please sign up to join our mailing list to hear about the next series of materially speaking, which will be coming out in the late autumn.