Alan Wilson

I have not written an elaborate treatise about my work as each viewer brings his or her own interpretation and hopefully each piece speaks for itself. Instead of blathering on about my work, I’ll blather about other stuff, which might explain my sculpture process or at least provide some entertainment.

I live north of Atlanta where I can make a racket and the horses and cows don’t seem to mind. I try to go to Italy every few years for marble and to work around other artists. I generally work in a studio in Querceta, which is deep in the heart of the stone industry and also happens to be on the Riviera. Damn! There are other towns one can carve in, but after exhaustive research, I found that Querceta has the best studio to gelato ratio.

On my first trip to the region I was fortunate enough to live in the stone fort that overlooked the town of Pietrasanta. Of course I lived in the attic, and the shower consisted of a randomly clogging garden hose next to the goat pen, but hey it was once a castle. I lived with a highly entertaining family for 8 months and even with the lack of indoor plumbing and the occasional tripe dinners I would not have traded the experience. The following trip, as I had grown older and more delicate, I decided to upgrade. My residence was in a converted tool shed. The walk to the outhouse was much shorter and I had access to a real shower sans goats. More recently through the network of friends, I was able to live in a converted bakery that had it’s own kitchen, bathroom (indoors), living area as well as a bedroom! I almost didn’t come back. Granted it was not the character building experience of the previous trips, but I think if I get to be much more of a character someone will lock me up.