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The Artist interviews himself, the return of Shanton Miers.
Shanton Miers: Well Johannes that was rather a long project, how do you feel now?
Johannes Steuck: Strangely empty, in a kind of vacuum I suppose.
SM: Surely you must be proud and relieved?
JS: Neither really, I was pushed to the very limit of my possibilities and came through by the skin of my teeth. Yes I probably feel relief, but it’s a bit like retiring from a very demanding job. Is there life after marble? What’s next
It’s been a totally absorbing process that’s changed both me and a lump of stone, where do we go from here?
SM: Can you say anything about the process?
JS: I can try, it all began in the autumn of 1999 in a conversation with Aonghus Gordon. He informed me that a large block of pure white marble would soon be arriving from the Isle of Thasos in Northern Greece; would I be interested in doing something with it?
SM: Sorry to interrupt you there - why Thasos? What’s the Thasos connection?
JS: You might well ask! There are various little strands that plait together that particular rope. Greek civilisation was founded on marble; Greek civilisation is the cradle of Europe! The Thasos quarries supplied the stone that built Ephesus, famous for its Latrines, brothels, Temples and a visit by St.Paul In the halcyon days of our youth Aonghus and I travelled to both Thasos and Ephesus.
SM: You travelled with Aonghus? How extraordinary.
JS: Yes, I know, it’s a bit like saying I went to school with Prince Charles. Unlikely as it seems, it is nonetheless true. We went all over the place, interestingly Ephesus was one we almost didn’t make together.
SM: Can you talk about it?
JS: Yeh - well it’s one of those quirky little things that sometimes happen when on a trip with Aonghus, we were in some town, I can’t quite remember which, I nipped into a little kiosk to get some fags (Aonghus took a somewhat dim view of my little vices) and when I stepped back out onto the street, he’d disappeared. I suffer from two complimentary afflictions, myopia and no sense of orientation. I couldn’t quite remember which way I’d come, the street was fairly crowded, I searched about a bit but didn’t yell
Needless to say we re-met somewhat fortuitously a few days later in Ephesus. Tut tut noises and head shakes were exchanged and the journey continued,
SM: You were saying something about the launch of the project.
JS: Ah yes - would I be interested in doing something with it? I try not to turn down a challenge so I accepted. I don’t think I lack imagination but in this case I completely lacked foresight
SM: What do you mean?
JS: Well if I had any kind of notion of what this project involved I would probably have run a million miles. Almost immediately on agreeing I was thrown into doubt and terror. I had foolishly agreed to:
I Work in the public eye (the sculpture was to be carved on site)
II Work together with Ruskin Mill students and;
III Work in a material I had absolutely no experience of, marble.
SM: Why did you agree?
JS: As an artist/daddy/hunter/gatherer, I am always on the look out for something to pop into my sack. To get any commissioned work represents an opportunity which would be too stupid to refuse. There’s also always the half-articulated
hope (well covered by life’s bitter experience); this could be the one. The big one. The one that takes me to a level of self-perpetuating creativity, that breaks the cage, lifts me into a greater public awareness. I might get other jobs; I might be able to continue working as an artist.
Just imagine looking back at your life from your bath chair and having to admit - yes, that’s where it all went wrong, all those years of fat salaries, golf, conversationless dinners and drunken naps - if only I had carved a lump of marble, how different it all could have been!
SM: So what was your reaction when the stone arrived?
JS: I almost couldn't bear to be there, I avoided people’s eyes and questions. A special crane (thanks to Tony) eventually manipulated it into the upright. I remember tapping the stone tentatively and thinking - my God, I’ve really done it this time - rubber bed rooms, here i come! 10 tonnes of stone, 3 metres high by one metre cube, harder than anything I’ve ever tackled. What the **** am I going to do.
SM: Was there some kind of brief? A theme to work on? Something to be represented?
JS: Yes there was - “create something Michaelic” Aonghus had said, a worthy sculpture for Ruskin Mill and the Millennium. I am not a figurative sculptor, so then the task was to show something that represented Michaelic elements, tension, transformation, balance, something like that.
I started by making a series of models out of clay and plaster. I even made a scale model out of stone very different from the shape the sculpture eventually took. It was based on a vertical spiral and was pierced. The idea was that the viewers could imagine themselves as passing through a doorway, being part of a dynamic struggle.
SM: What happened to that idea?
JS: It was shelved, one of the earlier models was used. It had an upright spiralling form and a kind of vortex on each side. One aspect was more related to the Ahrimanic adversary, the other to Lucifer. The vortices were centres of energy that hold the balance. A model or a Marquette for me is only a starting point; it’s a beginning, a trigger. The form itself has to find its own integrity, become itself.
SM: So when did you actually start?
JS: I made my first tentative taps on Michaelmas Day in 1999, but it was in autumn 2000 that I began properly. When I say properly, it was a little like trying to hand milk a cow in a straight jacket. I banged away with a heavy hammer, using the wrong chisels, jarring my arm and feeling incredibly exhausted and frustrated.
SM: Why didn’t you find out how to do it and use the right tools?
JS: A good question - I can only reply - because that’s how I am. I’ve never been good at informing myself. Instructions on packets allude me. I don’t know - I suppose I am just not that kind of person. I could have gone on a course, read the right books, scanned the net, I guess I have to do it my way, the hard way.
SM: So what about machinery? Compressed air? Angle grinders?
JS: No I never liked machines. As a child I found them terrifying, the technology I use is a compromise, I’d rather have nothing to do with it at all. I wanted my first (and possibly only) excursion into marble to be a total experience. I believe there are no short cuts really, everything has to be suffered, experienced fully. A machine could have removed lots of stone quickly; but would I have had the same experience of slow progression, evolution and metamorphosis? I doubt it. Also my wife was against it.
SM: Well no wonder it all took so long. Were you working full time on the marble?
JS: Good Lord, no my life is thick with other commitments, teaching, other art work, some quite large commissions and of course my own family.
SM: It must have been hard to maintain the momentum on a part-time basis?
JS: It was, particularly as it was very much an uphill struggle. The physical and psychological barriers were enormous. Without the delicious canteen food I might not have got there at all.
Sometimes I would bash away for hours and move hardly any material. Maintaining confidence, a springy step and a glittering eye in the face of such slow progress was hard.
SM: Did you work with the students?
JS: No - I suppose if I had been an experienced marble carver with some well trained assistants it might have been possible, as it was a very inexperienced very every now and then on the job person who couldn’t carry a team on a project of such delicacy and monumentality.
SM: Monumentality certainly, but what do you mean by delicacy? Your sledgehammer bashings don’t sound very delicate to me.
JS: Right from the very beginning I was aware of the preciousness of the material. This radiant, pure, white substance - somehow I hardly dared to strike it, delicate also in terms of money. I was well aware that it had not been donated to Ruskin Mill by the Greek government; not to mention what I was being paid. Now, just for the records, let me say that this was not, as some people probably still imagine, an hourly rate (I would be one of Nailsworth’s top earners by now) but a fixed amount for the whole job.
The other factor that strongly impinged itself upon me was the need to succeed. It simply wouldn't do to make gravel. The thought of some over-zealous student knocking off bits that he didn’t ought to, was more than I could bear. Of course I hope that it has meant something to be near the evolving lump, it has been there for some time after all.
SM: Did you have any feedback?
JS: Yes of course, there’s been a lot of interest all along. Many people penetrated into my pen, watched me working and even had a go. Sometimes on those hot and sultry summer days when heat and airlessness plunged me into the very tropics, I took off nearly all my clothes. At such time I would hastily duck behind the marble, addressing my visitors (particularly female persons) from a wall of stone. I generated quite a bit of unwelcome interest too. A certain nameless thorn in the flesh of the Ruskin Emporium managed to close me down for several months. I then had to work in a semi-soundproof box, somewhat difficult for a piece of such dimensions.
SM: Were you making a lot of noise?
JS: Not really, though that’s difficult to assess. As I’ve said I did not use machinery, just a hammer and chisel. I suppose modern life has brought us to this pass. We can’t do anything about the strimmers, chain saws, cars, factories and aeroplanes - that’s progress, that’s the mantle of stupefying deadness that shrouds us all. But woe unto the little man who makes a little irritating noise, to earn his irritating little living. We can come down on him like a tonne of bricks. Legislate him into poverty and silence. It’s a sad fact that the reason most given by children for not playing outside in the streets and shopping malls is the adult’s intolerance of noise. Sure, the world is a dangerous place full of speeding cars and perverts, television tells us so. Yet wouldn’t we rather hear the noise and bustle of childhood than all that bone-grating machinery? Or have we really reached a point where nothing must impede the almost spiritual pleasure of shopping? A chisel banging and a child yelling are not quite the same, but nonetheless they come from the same source. Human creativity, human activity.
That was another hurdle I had to overcome. The realisation that every stroke, every bell-like clang was sending somebody into paroxysms of anger and frustration.
SM: So what was it like in your box? How did you cope with only seeing the work from such a short distance.
JS: I quite liked my box, it kept me dry, was a barrier to the wind, yes it was hard if not impossible to see the emerging form, but I had privacy. I could carry on trying to carve marble, break a chisel every three or four days, curse and weep unseen, slink away if things got too much.
SM: Were you ever tempted to give up?
JS: Yes all the time but the consequences for giving up are so horrendous, so awesome, that I didn’t really have any choice. Giving up is a kind of death, an admission of failure. It’s saying; this challenge is beyond me, let me go back to making little things, I am really not an artist, it’s all a terrible mistake.
One has to pick up the gauntlet, prove one’s manhood, not to do so undermines integrity, leads to artistic and moral bankruptcy.
Remember all those stories of people who choose to die, saving the lives of others. Almost automatically, the question arises, what would I have done? But is there really a choice? If you, as an individual with a developed conscience, witness an event you could have altered, be it with the ultimate sacrifice, your life, then you must do it. What would it do for your further moral development not to have acted? You would die as a moral human being. It’s just the same for a work of art that you have committed yourself to. You’ve got to do it, otherwise you’re finished as an artist.
SM: As a non-artist, I can hardly imagine a lump of stone being a matter of life and death, but I believe you. But surely it could not all have been like that, there must have been a time when things got easier?
JS: Of course things got easier, suddenly inexplicably things started moving. Almost by chance I used the right chisel in the right way, it was as if the stone had let me in. Having witnessed my random brutish bangings with cold indifference and folded arms, it suddenly welcomed me. allowed me in to carve; indeed seemed eager to help and guide me. It was the beginning of the most exhilarating last lap.
SM: So when was this?
JS: In the spring of 2003. More than half the work was accomplished in less than a year.
SM: What changed in your technique? Why did it suddenly work?
JS: I had been using a thin pointed chisel and making extended linear marks across the surface. Suddenly I used a much heavier tool and worked straight into the stone, creating pits which joined up to make a rough cratered skin. It was possible to loosen the surface; each pit provided an anchorage for the chisel point, making it easy to work down to the next level. I really had the sensation of peeling away material to expose the form.
SM: That sounds a bit like Michelangelo perceiving the form in the stone and liberating it. Was it like that?
JS: Yes, I suppose so, I realised more and more clearly that the forms had their own integrity. A kind of current, a flow of energy had been set up. There was a certain “isness” to the shapes, almost as if the marble had will and consciousness. I reached the point in the summer where I was virtually living marble. I would shut my eyes at night and be transported into a landscape of breathing, moving stone. I was ant-like in size, a baby sucking at the pap of God, a lover embracing a milky Goddess.
SM: So your agony turned into ecstasy in the end?
JS: Yes, you could say that, though all too brief. Apparently no great joy can be uncontaminated, be utterly free of shadow. By this time, June, July, August of 2003, the sculpture had more or less been paid for. The honey pot licked out. I was experiencing tremendous exhilaration on one level and the most difficult financial problems on the other. I was carried on a great wave of creative energy that bore me effortlessly along. It was good to be doing the work for it’s own sake, freely given, freed from necessity, freed from gain. But how to pay the bills? All those black-edged envelopes that only said one thing - “we’re going to cut off your balls.” Where was the money going to come from? Somehow we limped and fluttered through; the full extent of the damage is only now visible. To generate the stamina to see a project of this nature through, naturally means freeing oneself up, letting other things go, making space. You asked me at the beginning how I felt. I said strangely empty. This you understand is not only on an artistic level.
SM: So what next Johannes? Where do you go from here?
JS: Difficult to say - hopefully not to a brown paper bag under a motorway bridge. I might not have much foresight, but I’ve got a bit of faith. Something will happen. Ideally I would like to launch into some other grand project. 30 more lumps of marble of the same size would do nicely thank you. It seems to be one of those laws of nature that as soon as one has learnt something, it’s time to move on. I can carve marble a bit now, it would be great to continue taking taking to it all that I have learnt and experienced. But life isn’t like that. One never gets the same chance twice.
Despite all the problems and hiccups, both outer and inner, I felt I was doing something for the community. By community I don’t mean only the students and staff of Ruskin Mill - I mean the whole neighbourhood. I hope I was not only a nuisance.
One of the great problems facing modern art and the modern artist is: Who’s it for? Does it just go off to the market place, the Gallery? To be sold on to anonymous buyers? Or does art still have a wider spiritual and social function?
To have worked on site, albeit in a box, is still an ideal. The artist is providing something tangible to the community that surrounds him. He shares his insights, sufferings and skills and in return is given a place, has a role to play. This has always been the case throughout history, be it producing sacred objects for the shamen, altar paintings for the church or portraits for a patron His skills and services were necessary for the cultural/spiritual definition of what constitutes a society, a civilisation.
I think this is a life and death issue, something worth fighting and suffering for. Human culture and civilisation will only continue if there is a creative renewal/
Art has to be something other than the clever concept or the decorative bauble. Art has to be the very stuff of life itself.
Where do I go from here? I can only hope onwards, to further work, further agony, further ecstasy.
SM: Can you take it?
JS: Yes - always.
