MARY & ME

One and a half week ago I attended a soap stone carving workshop together with my mum. I like a challenge so I took the biggest stone I could find, grabbed a hand saw, some fancy rasps and files and got started. I wanted to create a Virgin Mary at all costs, but my piece of stone was formless and somehow I wasn't inspired. I took the stone in my hands and rubbed it, trying to feel the 'magic' between us, but I just didn't! 

Luckily, after a few frustrating hours, I was off, rasping, forming, carving like crazy. While the others were working really precisely, with clean desks and mouth covers, I was a butcher. From top to toe I was covered with dust, forgetting about everything and everyone around me. I felt relieved and it felt great to be in my own creative world again, creating something out of nothing. 


The result:

Just like I have a thing for beards, I have a thing for the Virgin Mary. My love for her started when I inherited my grandmother's embroidered image of Mary with child. It's really special to me cause above all it's symbolic for the person my grandmother was: kind-hearted, motherly and warm. Although she had a lot of hardship in her life, she never lost her pride or let her heart turn to stone. She never judged anyone and has been a mother and grandmother to many different people. Her favorite saying was: 'when you give, you'll receive'. And that's what I believe too.

In my house you find many different Mary's and Mary inspired images. 
Like these on a moodboard in my atelier.. 

..or this one in the lavatory..

..or these in the living room

On the picture there is me and my sister Mary (Marielle) when we were small