With Ulysses, through a friend, I discovered a man who was the curator of the Queen's ship collection. And through him, I discovered how Ulysses ship actually worked and how the mast was put in place, because all these sculptures are like a piece of theater and you've got to have your stage set up properly before you put your figure in it. I grew my toenails for four months to figure out what that would actually look like on the guy.
Speaker 2:Hi. This is Sarah with another episode of Material You Speaking, where artists and artisans tell their stories through the materials they choose. Today, Mike Axon and I weave up a winding track above Pietro Santa to meet Canadian born sculptor, Robin Bell. His house is surrounded by well tended olive trees and a garden bursting with a riot of orange marigolds. A yellow outdoor storage space has shelves laden with maquettes and sculptures in various stages of completion.
Speaker 2:The flags of Greece, Canada and Ireland hang down from the ceiling worn and faded by the rigours of the hillside weather. We settle down to chat at a sheltered outdoor table with a spectacular view over the wide expanse of the Basilica Coast and the never ending ending horizon. We ask him to introduce
Speaker 1:himself. My name is Robin Bell, and I'm a Canadian. I'm actually dual citizenship. I'm Canadian and Irish, thanks to my maternal grandfather. And I just realized the other day that I'm approaching 49 of being in Pietra Santo, Fifty Years of being in Italy or creating sculptures in Italy.
Speaker 2:So going back, where did you start life?
Speaker 1:Pretty well self taught because first, I went to Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ontario and then Trinity College in University of Toronto. And I was probably supposed to be something else. What? Something professional, like a a lawyer or whatever. My father was a colonel.
Speaker 1:But as I was writing my last thesis in university, this friend that was in the art section gave me some plasticine. And I started working with that, and I found that much more interesting than writing the thesis, actually. And afterwards, just through fate, ran into a friend's mother in Ottawa, and she was having drawing classes with a sculptor in Ottawa named Bruce Garner, who was teaching drawing classes same time. And I worked with him for a couple of months. He was getting all the cracked Eskimo sculptures that came out of the North.
Speaker 1:He had a friend inside the department, and he would just pass out these sculptures to him, and then he would rework them into other sculptures or let us work them. But he said, if you really wanted to learn how to sculpt stone, I have a friend in Carrara. And it just so happened at the time that my father, being a colonel, he was also, at the time, head of communication security for NATO in Brussels. So I got as a dependent to go home for Christmas. So we went home to Christmas.
Speaker 1:I announced what I was going to do. He said it was an occupation that I couldn't afford. And with the family trip, I skied at Zermatt. That was the last time in my life I skied, but it was a great place to end it. Then got on a train and went to Carrara.
Speaker 1:And Bruce didn't know if Bart would be there or not, but Bart was there. And I found him, and he found a place for me to work. I found a place to live, a little Vespa to run around on, and it was, like, wonderful. I was very Puritan Protestant with my work ethic. So you would work twenty one days and then take half a day off type of thing.
Speaker 3:So how did your work develop? You said you played with plasticine and didn't write your thesis. What was your art education like?
Speaker 1:Oh, I didn't have an art education. And so anything I've learned was actually with the artisans. And the beauty of an artisan is that once he sees you're serious, he'll teach you things that it might have taken him ten years to discover how to do it, but he'll tell you if you're serious about what you're doing. He's more than willing because the thing with an artisan is there's no use taking your knowledge to the grave. You wanna pass it on.
Speaker 1:That's what artisans are about. And here, it was marble, but then my life changed, and it became more bronze. Pietro Sint at the time is light years from what it is now. It really was a town where at twelve noon, there was suddenly silence. Machines were off.
Speaker 1:This is in downtown Pietra Santa. And people went to lunch, and then at 01:00, one thirty, the machines were back on, and the town was back at work. I've been here long enough that I've seen what's the word? It's a boue, which is like, oxen walking on the street to carry slabs of marble from one studio to another, sort of in their little carriages. And when you look at Pietro Santa now, you can't believe that that was even happened or was possible.
Speaker 2:That's wonderful image.
Speaker 1:At the time okay. Let's take you one back one step. There was a bar called Barrijeia, which is now called Gato Nero, which was outside the walls of Pietro Santa. And it was where all the foreigners were actually foreigner sculptors we would meet, and it was the only place with a phone. Your mail could be left there.
Speaker 1:It was a bit like a club. At the same time, you could run a tab and pay at the end of the month. It was a mother and three daughters running the place. It was absolutely wonderful. Sam Gyarvie, he used it as his office.
Speaker 1:It was quite an experience. So I had some little tiny waxes that I made in Canada, and I wanted to get some more wax. I was in the bar talking to somebody and complained, but I said, why don't you go down to Trelluche and see what with this Claudio Mariani foundry? So, anyway, I met Claudio Mariani, and he said, oh, you want some wax? Here's some wax.
Speaker 1:Oh, you wanna work next to an expert artisan in wax retouch? Well, here's Ivo, and Ivo used to be the head of the wax department for the Jackson Foundry. And so he's sort of there. I'm next to him. And then Mariani says, oh, you wanna finish your bronzes?
Speaker 1:And then you start to learn how to finish your bronzes. And this turned me into really an artist artisan in the sense that there are so many sculptors that come here that are actually just working a checkbook because they're maybe producing their original model, maybe not, but all the other work is being done by the artisans, where I was actually in the pit with the artisans working. And so the pieces got bigger and bigger. Finally, I get my first big commission for the West Edmonton Mall, and it's three oil rig workers. And I've got them in three different historical periods of time where one's dressed as the very first one right after the first World War.
Speaker 1:He's got droppers on and a hat. That's the old man. And the young man has just got a classical face. He's not sure really what he's gonna do. So that was the first big one, and that really sort of changed because by that point, I really wanted was more interested in making larger sculptures.
Speaker 1:And at the same time, I moved away from the so called art world, and it became more involved with shopping centers. So the next one, I went in to see this man, Lorne Braithwaite, and he ran Cambridge Leaseholds. And he suddenly had this idea he wanted a sculpture of Ken Dryden, who was a very famous Montreal Canadiens goalie and a Canadian politician and a Canadian icon. What? He said, you know, I'd like to sculpt, but you have to convince him.
Speaker 1:So I phoned Dryden, and I got him on board. I convinced him to put on his equipment. Five years, he hadn't had it on. We did a photo shoot. I've had photographs blown up life size.
Speaker 1:I had a meter stick in the picture, so things and then he lent me some of his equipment. Both my brothers are Habs fans, and Habs fans are a bit like Juventus fans. I mean, it's religion more than being a fan.
Speaker 3:What do the Habs stand for?
Speaker 1:Montreal Canadians, the hockey team. And it was like having sacred objects in my house, smelly sacred objects. Another big piece for West Edmonton Mall, which was a life-sized right whale, its head and another right whale's tail, because it's two whales actually. Because the position it's in a whale can't actually do, so it is two positions. And that was a great story because at the time that I'm looking for information on whales because the problem is all the photographs are shot with wide angle lenses underwater, so you don't really see the perception of what the animal looks like, and you need a skeleton.
Speaker 1:Well, I go to Pisa, and the skeleton of a right whale, which has been hanging up in this building for two hundred years, are now taking it down to take to the Chertoza, where they're building a natural history museum. And so I got this whale skeleton was suddenly on the ground, and I could make a scale model of the skeleton to then fill it out for making my model of the whale.
Speaker 3:Was it a life size right whale?
Speaker 1:Life size right whale, and we set it up so you could walk into the mouth and, down some steps, some panels on the inside of a made up fictitious group of hieroglyphs of people hunting whales and whatnot and the tail. And it was loved in Edmonton. In Wikipedia, for that West Edmonton mall, the whale is their fifth highest attraction that people like, and the oil rig workers that I built for them is, I think, the ninth.
Speaker 3:That's a massive sculpture. Is that in bronze?
Speaker 1:Yeah. It was bronze, and it's, like, 4,500 kilos for the head and a 500 kilos for the tail.
Speaker 2:So can I ask about the materials here? Because you you started in marble in Carrara. Did you move away from marble?
Speaker 3:There was a little bit of a mix up
Speaker 1:when I was still doing exhibitions, when I've done some really beautiful marble carving. And there are some great marble bronze combinations that are really wonderful. But I just drifted more and more towards this bronze. And so suddenly, as far as materials go, I mean, like, the whole thing is you've gotta build the original model. Every project is a different material to build your source.
Speaker 1:I mean, like, the classic would be clay, but we've gone way beyond that. One of the ones for Hong Kong, it was wooden wax. The first one for Felix Dennis, I built it basically in paper mache and wax, And we cast everything except for the portrait of Robert Crumb, the portrait of the cartoon's head, and the hands were molds, but everything else was directly cast just like in the old days. And that's when you really have to have a foundry that's on the ball because if they goof on the casting, you're finished. And this gets me back to Mariani because I'm also not only am I building the models, I'm retouching my waxes, and I'm also doing the final finishing on the bronze.
Speaker 1:The patina and everything else, I leave to the professional patina guys because they're doing that all the time. So there's no use to me. So we've even been playing with that. This Enzo Novatti, and then his son even became the head of the patina.
Speaker 3:So what's interesting to me is that you're deeply involved in these stories. How does that sense of storytelling inform the actual sculpture that you do?
Speaker 1:These projects are like writing novels. So they take eighteen months. I did a horse that took three years. It's amazing. It was Pepe Sand, and he was, like, a Canadian horse.
Speaker 1:And so it took years, but he was finally inducted into the cutting horse hall of fame. He was the cutting horse of the year, I think, in '68.
Speaker 2:What is a cutting horse?
Speaker 1:A cutting horse is a quarter horse, but it's to direct cattle. So and they're called cutting cattle. I saw these cowboys in Texas. I went down and visited the horse, and it was like they'd met Buddha. I mean, when they talked about this horse, it was just total reverence.
Speaker 1:And they could say, this horse had so much cow sense. They didn't have to direct it. So then I came to Italy to make it. Chunky gave me his saddle also and his chaps and a hat. I find a horse that's similar to a cutting horse.
Speaker 1:I make a standing model, so a life size standing model of the horse even before we begin. But that took, like, three years to put together. And then the saddest part of the whole story was that both the horse and Chunky were dead by the time the thing was inaugurated. When I started out, we used to have arguments on whether should you carve free carving in marble or should you have a model first? And we would spend hours in the bar discussing this and then doing it or not doing it.
Speaker 1:In these stories, the company put on a cutting horse competition at the unveiling of the horse, and I had these cowboys coming up to me and putting their hands on my back and saying, son, he's wearing his equipment. You know, I mean, like, this is spot on.
Speaker 2:Just following on from that, really, I I know you did a a sculpture of Winston Churchill. How did you prepare for that?
Speaker 1:Felix Dennis was one of my English patrons, and he's no longer with us, but he owned Dennis Publishing. And I did Robert Crum for him, and then I did Winston Churchill, and then I did Ulysses. With Churchill, he said, okay. I want the great coat, the cane, and the v, and his hat, the hat he's wearing. Okay.
Speaker 1:So then I start doing my research. I think I read 3,000 pages of research. It was, like, four months before I even started making anything because I was into getting this totally right for Felix. So looking at this, reading the book, seeing all the videos of Churchill, I suddenly realized this is it because I see him with some bricks. Also, the thing was that this was supposed to be Churchill after the first bombing of London, which I think is the September 8.
Speaker 1:And that's when I suddenly realized, okay, I'm gonna make a pile of bricks that he's on. Into these bricks are gonna be a whole bunch of history of Churchill. And then he's on top of it with his v and he's walking because Churchill was always on the move, so he's walking. Under the bricks was everything from his Nobel Prize to his paintbrushes to the things that he did because he really changed the history of the world, certainly a Western world. When he used to write letters to his wife in the house because they slept in different bedrooms, he would sign his with the little pig, and she would sign hers with a cat.
Speaker 1:And depending on how many kids were in the house, there would be kittens around her tail. And so I have, like, a picture of the little pig and the cat both in the bricks. There's his horoscope. There's his famous quotes, the things he did. I mean, the 10 things that amazed me about Churchill.
Speaker 1:And I guess the last big sculpture I've made so far is Ulysses, which was another fantastic project because I got to use all the knowledge that I've gathered up to that time in the production of it. And with Ulysses, through a friend, I discovered a man who was the curator of the Queen's ship collection. And through him, I discovered how Ulysses ship actually worked and how the mast was put in place, because all these sculptures are like a piece of theater, and you've got to have your stage set up properly before you put your figure in it. I grew my toenails for four months to figure out what that would actually look like on him as I put that into place on the guy. And also his ears because the ears are essential.
Speaker 1:Okay. He's on the mast. It's that essential scene where he's on the mast listening to the sirens, the sound that nobody in the world has ever heard and lived through it. And he's got everybody else on board with wax in their ears, and he's listening to this. So it would be so much easier to just put the curls of his hair over the ears.
Speaker 1:You just forget the ears. But I have the ears there, and it's set up so that there's a little piece of clay that's been molded. There's the curl. It gets cast separately, and then it gets welded into place. But when you look underneath it, there's a full ear on both sides.
Speaker 3:You're like a method actor for sculpture.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Exactly. I mean, that's I gotta find my character first.
Speaker 2:Could you tell us a little about your childhood? It sounds intriguing. Your military family. Were you on the move?
Speaker 1:Yeah. We were on the move. I loved it, actually. Well, my father, because he was electronic engineer in the military, he helped put up the dew line, which is on the top of Canada, and it's all connected into Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs. So we spent three years in Colorado Springs while they were in the process of doing all the connection of the whole thing in, America.
Speaker 1:Certainly, I loved those years there. It was a great experience.
Speaker 3:What is the DEW line again?
Speaker 1:DEW line is a series of on top of Canada, I imagine they're also in Alaska, it's radar to tell them when the Russians are coming over the top. And NORAD NORAD, North American Air Defense Command. And it's all connected into Cheyenne Mountain, and Cheyenne Mountain is where the button will be pushed when when it all goes down.
Speaker 3:So this is all part of the end of the world? Yeah. And you're in on it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Were you a big family, Robin? Are you one of many children?
Speaker 1:I'm the first of six children eldest of six. I'm the black sheep, I guess.
Speaker 2:Are you?
Speaker 1:As a kid, I couldn't spell for beans. I was so glad to get out of grade eight because we would spend hours trying to teach me to spell. It just never happened. And then I got the literature prize from the prep school I go to before university. My mother certainly, backed me.
Speaker 2:Was your mom artistic?
Speaker 1:On her side, the Hungerford side. My great grandmother was an Irish writer, and she coined the phrase beauty is in the byes of the beholder. Margaret Hamilton, who wrote as the duchess, was her name.
Speaker 3:Your upbringing, military family, six kids, what might have predisposed you to the life you've ended up living as a sculptor?
Speaker 1:I guess the pioneer aspect of my grandfather. The fact and being told that you can do anything that you set your mind to do, you can do. So, I mean, my father, I imagine, had reconciled him a little bit when he finally saw some of these big sculptures being made. But my mother certainly backed me from from day one. She always was just, no.
Speaker 1:If you wanna do something, just put your heart into it and do it.
Speaker 3:I think also I'm hearing a little bit of
Speaker 2:the Irish storytelling coming through.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I can tell a yarn or two. But my grandfather, I mean, he was a real pioneer. I mean, my mother was born on the kitchen table.
Speaker 1:He was a veterinarian, and they would like, as a film, they would go and buy sugar and flour twice a year from the nearest town, and they would get horse and sled in the winter overnight trip to go to Huntsville. And the summertime, little gauge trains on little islands and ferries.
Speaker 2:Can we talk about the work that you do now? Your sketches
Speaker 1:The sketches. And the drawings are just ideas that come to mind, and I'm in my fourth year now. And I'm instead of publishing me post nowadays, an image a day, Monday to Friday, and then from the archives, Saturday and Sunday. I don't know where they're coming from, but they're driving me. And they're giving me something, and that's good.
Speaker 1:With the drawings, here's, like, the first idea that comes. And then it gets worked out a bit more. And then I start to figure out what I want in my backgrounds. And then, you know, I put it away. And then I comes to the part of the week where I start to decide, okay, now I gotta make the drawings.
Speaker 1:I'll get another look at it so I can change it slightly if I wanna change it then. So I've got one more shot at it before putting it on paper. And then it's all on archival paper with archival ink. Everybody asked me, when are you going back to Canada? When are you leaving here?
Speaker 1:And I have a problem because I've looked at the horizon of the sea since I've been here. Because the first house across the way, I had horizon of the sea, and now I have it here. And it's an ever changing picture of the sea. The sun, the non sun, the moon, the clouds. It's continually moving, and you've got this view that's like infinity.
Speaker 2:So thanks to Robin Bell. You can follow him on Instagram at bell robin c h or Facebook at Robin c h bell. Gail Scoff took some terrific photographs of Robin which you can see on our social media at materially speaking podcast and at materiallyspeaking.com on Robin's episode page. You can also check out Gail's work on her website, geldscoff.com, and on Instagram at scoff up close. Thanks for listening.
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