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Rita Meier learned the direct carving technique from artisans and the international community of artists in the studios around Pietrasanta. In this episode she talks about the grades of hardness of various stones and describes the process of carving.

Inspired by organic shapes, Rita discusses her seed pods series which she sees as the carriers and protectors of future lives, always perfectly adapted to survive in their environment.

Rita describes her fascination for limpets, very old beings which cling to almost anything while cleaning the water they live in. She loves their shapes and wanted to carve them into the surface of marble, as they appear in nature.

‘It started out with leftover pieces of statuario,’ she says. ‘Since they were not cut but removed manually with one blow of the hammer, the crystalline surface remains untouched, looking like snow glittering in the sun.’

She had the idea to carve limpet fossils on some river rocks of marble she had, adding a natural iron-coloured patina. Though fossils don’t appear naturally in Carrara marble, Rita played around and carved ‘fossils’ into the marble so that they look almost real.

Rita Meier at INTRECCIArte