After studying zoology, then going to art school in Bournemouth, Anne tells how it was the traditional teaching of Signorina Simi in Florence that made her feel she was finally in the right place.
Anne stayed in touch with her fellow students who learnt with the artist and teacher Nera Simi (1890–1987) alongside her in the 1980s. Even when it was seen as out of fashion, Nera Simi continued to teach by the atelier method having learnt it from her father, Filadelfo Simi who had studied under Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904). This link with the past gave Anne a close connection to the classic academic traditions of the late 1800s. Recently she felt moved to do a bust of her highly esteemed teacher which she called simply, Nera Simi.
Anne has lived in Italy since 1980 and developed her own painting style combining her keen sense of observation, love of animals and Renaissance drafting skills. For many years she has also been coming to Pietrasanta to cast her sculptures in the foundries.
Facing the future, a bronze of a male mute swan flapping its wings after preening, is the culmination of Anne’s long-held dream to sculpt a larger-than-life-size swan. It was cast at Fonderia Artistic Mariani and in a PDF on her website she describes how the sculpture was created.
During the first, strict, lockdown in Italy Anne says she felt like a prisoner in her own home. Her painting Balcony expresses the fear she experienced during this period. When it became apparent that she might be at home for some time, she decided to set achievable goals to give herself a routine. Every evening she painted the sunset from her balcony initiating a project involving the close study of light. You can read more about this on her blog.
It was during this project that she noticed how each evening a passenger train passed by and the moving carriages picked up and reflected the setting sunlight. As well as the train, little glints of strong light could be glimpsed elsewhere too — on the gutterings, the aerials and the shiny-leaved magnolia tree, the top of which Anne could just include in the foreground of her painting, The 7:30 train.
Anne describes the close relationship between sculptor and model, and the moment the sculpture ‘comes to life’ for the artist. She references the painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme (below). The motif is taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and depicts the sculptor Pygmalion kissing his statue Galatea at the moment the goddess Aphrodite brings her to life.
Born on a farm in Dorset, Anne Shingleton has always loved painting animals. In 1980 she came to Florence joining the atelier of a teacher who changed her life.
After studying zoology, then going to art school in Bournemouth, Anne tells how it was the traditional teaching of Signorina Simi in Florence that made her feel she was finally in the right place.
Anne stayed in touch with her fellow students who learnt with the artist and teacher Nera Simi (1890–1987) alongside her in the 1980s. Even when it was seen as out of fashion, Nera Simi continued to teach by the atelier method having learnt it from her father, Filadelfo Simi who had studied under Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904). This link with the past gave Anne a close connection to the classic academic traditions of the late 1800s. Recently she felt moved to do a bust of her highly esteemed teacher which she called simply, Nera Simi.
Anne has lived in Italy since 1980 and developed her own painting style combining her keen sense of observation, love of animals and Renaissance drafting skills. For many years she has also been coming to Pietrasanta to cast her sculptures in the foundries.
Facing the future, a bronze of a male mute swan flapping its wings after preening, is the culmination of Anne’s long-held dream to sculpt a larger-than-life-size swan. It was cast at Fonderia Artistic Mariani and in a PDF on her website she describes how the sculpture was created.
During the first, strict, lockdown in Italy Anne says she felt like a prisoner in her own home. Her painting Balcony expresses the fear she experienced during this period. When it became apparent that she might be at home for some time, she decided to set achievable goals to give herself a routine. Every evening she painted the sunset from her balcony initiating a project involving the close study of light. You can read more about this on her blog.
It was during this project that she noticed how each evening a passenger train passed by and the moving carriages picked up and reflected the setting sunlight. As well as the train, little glints of strong light could be glimpsed elsewhere too — on the gutterings, the aerials and the shiny-leaved magnolia tree, the top of which Anne could just include in the foreground of her painting, The 7:30 train.
Anne describes the close relationship between sculptor and model, and the moment the sculpture ‘comes to life’ for the artist. She references the painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme (below). The motif is taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and depicts the sculptor Pygmalion kissing his statue Galatea at the moment the goddess Aphrodite brings her to life.
A podcast where artists tell their stories through the materials they choose.
Anne Shingleton:
The countryside and everything natural and my relationship with animals has always been a very, very important part of my life. I like all animals, even cockroaches. I mean, find them fascinating. But I used to draw the chicken a lot because they were there, they were handy. Do you know, all my work, if I don't think too hard about it, it reflects my inner emotions, whether it's a sculpture or a painting.
Anne Shingleton:
Most people, when they see something to draw it, they draw what they think they see, not what actually is the image that's coming in their eye. We're too influenced by what we have in our brains. But of course, you need somebody to literally say, look at this and look at this. Now, which do you think is bigger or smaller? Have you measured this?
Anne Shingleton:
Why don't you compare this with this? That will help you. And I said, where did you study? Oh, she said, I studied in Florence with Nerina Simi. La Signorina, they called her.
Anne Shingleton:
I finally got the letter which said come, so I went and that was in October 1980. Changed my life. You can learn a lot of this stuff online, but if you actually have somebody there, you're going to make enormous leaps forward much more quickly. In fact, I remember her one time saying, I'm not going to tell you anymore, that's enough. Otherwise I'd be telling you everything. You've got to try and find it out for yourself because then you learn.
Anne Shingleton:
It's that moment when a sculpture suddenly has presence. She came to life for me. At that point, whenever I sprayed her with water, I was saying, Excuse me, Signorino.
Sarah Monk:
Hi, this is Sarah with another episode of Materially Speaking, where artists tell their stories through the materials they choose. Today, I'm meeting English artist Anne Shingleton, who's lived in Italy since she came to study here in 1980. I first interviewed Anne over Zoom at the start of the pandemic, both of us stuck in our tiny lockdown worlds last spring. Luckily, I was also able to meet her at her gallery come studio in Pietrasanta last autumn, in those months when we could travel. What a difference it makes seeing work firsthand.
Sarah Monk:
The vibrant colors, the luminous light, the intensity of her sunsets as observed through the lockdown. The truth for me is that however we've adapted to our virtual world, nothing replaces seeing art close-up. To reach Anne's studio, I had to weave through the back streets of Pietrasanta and start up the hill towards Caprillia. Suddenly, I was taken off guard by a Chinese goose wildly honking my arrival. A dog barked, a cat slid past my ankles, and I saw Anne waiting on a deck chair outside her studio enjoying the sun.
Anne Shingleton:
My name is Anne Shingleton. I've been an artist pretty much all my life. I came to Italy in 1980 to study art and I'm still here.
Sarah Monk:
You're now living in Pietrasanta . How did your work bring you here or what brought you here?
Anne Shingleton:
Well, actually it was the foundry. I started to paint on some plates in a funny little place just South of Florence, where there was this artisan. He also had a very small bronze foundry, which he and his daughter, they used to pour the bronze. I remember seeing them pouring bronze and they were wearing sandals.
Sarah Monk:
Oh my God!
Anne Shingleton:
And the wife would be there saying Brucia? Brucia?
Sarah Monk:
What does that mean?
Anne Shingleton:
That means it can burn you, it can burn you! It was just a funny scene and a sort of thing that you can just find if you dig a little bit in these old parts of Italy. I worked with the Harry Jackson Foundry to begin with and I was introduced to wax and I thought what wonderful material this is Because before I was making my animals out of plastolina, which is a kind of plastic clay. You don't have to keep it wet.
Anne Shingleton:
But wax is wonderful. You have a little Bunsen burner and you put these tools on it and heat them up and then you can cut wax. It's just like cutting butter. It's wonderful. They showed me all the tricks on how you work things and everybody was so friendly and nice.
Anne Shingleton:
Well, I suppose it helps being a young woman and being surrounded by lots of men. It was nice because it always is like that in the foundry. And I saw what everybody was able to do, the other artists coming in, so you learn from seeing what everybody else is doing. And then the Harry Jackson Foundry was then taken over by Mariani Foundry, and I continued to work with them and I still do. People come from all over the world to work with them.
Anne Shingleton:
I'm very happy to be an old client. Over the years I've been coming here and of course I've got to know lots of people here, not only the artisans, the artists that I've met here. So that's my reason for coming to Pietrasanta .
Sarah Monk:
We're now talking in June 2020. We have all been at home for a long while because of the pandemic. You embarked on a project, I think, when the lockdown started. Can you tell me a little about that?
Anne Shingleton:
Yes. Well, with the lockdown, which started the March 9 in Italy here, I felt afraid. We all didn't know quite how to deal with this. I live on my own, I have my cat, I have loads of friends, but my salvation has always been my work. And so I needed to focus somehow.
Anne Shingleton:
And then I thought, well, you know, I've always been wanting to paint sunsets and the sky. We had fabulous weather all through April, and my flat looks out to this great expanse of sky, and I see the sun go down over the horizon every evening. And, of course, every sunset is different. Every evening is different. So I started making some studies every evening, choosing a moment in time when the light I found attractive.
Anne Shingleton:
The sun might have been 10 degrees or 20 degrees above the horizon. That's one effect. And then when it went down to just about two or three degrees above the horizon, everything of course changes. And then again, after the sun has gone down. So you can get lots of little paintings on the go, but each one doesn't last very long.
Anne Shingleton:
And I certainly wasn't having guests or entertaining or going out and sitting in the bars. And so I could work on all these. And it taught me a lot. By working, you learn. Nature teaches you. Straightforward.
Sarah Monk:
I think one of the first ones that you showed me of this series is kind of the corner of your balcony and it's got a very trapped feeling. You're looking through the bars of the balcony out at the sunset. Tell me a little about that piece.
Anne Shingleton:
Well, that's how I felt, I suppose. I didn't look beyond the balcony. It was a frightening moment. You're afraid to go out there. There's this virus out there and you don't know how it's going to attack you.
Anne Shingleton:
And I suppose those bars represented a barrier to keep me in and I felt trapped. But then afterwards, all the other paintings were looking beyond and I realized that it's just a mental thing.
Sarah Monk:
And I love the work with the light. What sort of things did you learn about light? Because light is in a way a material for an artist, isn't it?
Anne Shingleton:
Painters are always interested in light because you can change the lighting to suit what kind of emotions you want to get across. Emotions come across in paintings through color and lighting and how the tone is arranged. So, to get more of an understanding of different lighting conditions gives you more tools in your toolbox to play around with. And what I learned in this particular one was the sun. I mean, how do you paint the sun?
Anne Shingleton:
It's a ball of fire. If you were to try and paint it with the colors on your palette, you can't because all you've got is white. White is your lightest light. Unless you're going to do something kinky and put a light bulb behind your canvas or something with a hole there you've got to put everything else in relation to your tones and your colors all in relation to that light. And that takes a lot of figuring out, actually.
Anne Shingleton:
And then there are little tricks that help show the intensity of that light. And what I was dealing with actually was I found that in the evening as the sun went down around here everybody's got aerials on their houses and there's gutterings and there's the bars of my terrace. And things glint. And when they glint, you know, they reflect the sunlight. They actually have a kind of halo around them.
Anne Shingleton:
It's called a sort of lens flare. And in fact, the sun does too. If you take a photograph into the sunshine, you often can't see anything immediately around it because there's this sort of lens flare that comes out. So I thought, well, I'll try it in painting and bingo, it kind of worked. You almost wanted to close your eyes, put your sunglasses on because it seemed like the sun was so bright.
Anne Shingleton:
It's very clever. It's all trickery really. It's just learning about trickery.
Sarah Monk:
In what way was the light different during lockdown?
Anne Shingleton:
There was a clarity in the air, palpable. Absolutely. And of course, you don't have all the trails of the airplanes in the sky. And we had one clear day after another. But also, you know, mist and pollution in the air can actually create certain atmospheric effects, which are fun for artists to use.
Anne Shingleton:
But we all remarked upon the clarity of the air. It was lovely. Of course, we were all glued to our internet and learning about the coronavirus and everything. And I went on the terrace and it was a slightly hazy day that day. And I looked up and there was this big rainbow around the sun and I said: Oh, a sun's corona!
Anne Shingleton:
What fun! And I managed to adjust myself so that my head was in the middle blocking out the sunshine and there would be this great big round rainbow around me and I managed to take a few photographs of that. Then I transferred that into a small self portrait with the sun's corona around my head. It was just a fun thing to do.
Anne Shingleton:
I was born into a farming family in Dorset and so I grew up with lots of animals. I like all animals, know, even cockroaches. I find them fascinating. But I used to draw the chicken a lot because they were there, were handy and I knew where they nested, so that meant that they sat quiet. And then of course in my teens, like most young girls, I became mad on horses, so I was just drawing horses all the time. And then eventually I did get my own horse that was stuck in the paddock outside. So that was lovely.
Anne Shingleton:
I was sent away to school, and in school I loved science of course, and I was always good at art. Anne oh, she's good at art. I always had that label. But when it came to leaving school, I didn't know what to do, whether to go to university and study science or art school.
Anne Shingleton:
At that time, art schools were changing rapidly. They were throwing out all the old norms of classical teaching. And I wasn't interested at all in what was then known as modern art or abstract art. I don't know if you remember, Animal Magic was a programme that was on the television and I used to love watching that as a child.
Sarah Monk:
Me too.
Anne Shingleton:
You remember that? With Johnny Morris and a chimpanzee or something. And there was a guy called Keith Shackleton who magically, literally, drew these wonderful drawings. And I just drooled over these, the drawings of animals. And so I thought, well, I'll write to him. He must know because he seemed such a nice, kindly man. I got a letter back and it was quite interesting and he said, well, actually, Anne, in my day I really didn't have the choice because I think he was in the Navy or the Air Force? I can't remember, probably the Navy because he's a keen sailor. And he said, I suggest you go to university first and then if you're really keen on art, you'll do it anyway. And I thought that was very good advice.
Anne Shingleton:
And so I followed it, went to university, studied zoology, Swansea, and came on out and found that I could even get a grant. I was very lucky in those days, unlike nowadays poor kids having to pay. I went for two years and studied illustration and graphic design at a local art school. And that kind of gave me the tools to get going for the rest. That was Bournemouth And Poole College Of Art, and I just did everything I could there: illustration, graphics, printmaking, life drawing, photography.
Anne Shingleton:
So that gave me skills to do illustration and etching. I bought myself a little press and set that up in the back of my parents' garage.
Sarah Monk:
Can you tell me how an etching press works?
Anne Shingleton:
Well, an etching is called an etching because you use a copper plate or a metal plate of some sort. It can even be iron or zinc. And it is etched with acid. So what happens is that you have a plate, a flat plate, nice and shiny, and you put a thin layer of wax on it and then you draw in it with a very small, very fine line. I pinched a hatpin from my mother's jewellery.
Anne Shingleton:
I still got it! And it gave me an extremely fine line. And then what happens is that you cover the back and you then put the whole thing into a bath of acid, sulphuric acid, and it eats into, it etches into the metal, giving you a really delicate line. Rembrandt did loads of etchings. And when you take it out, the process continues by cleaning off the wax, and then you find that you've got these little tiny fine lines and you rub paint over and then clean it so that it's just in the lines.
Anne Shingleton:
Then you have a lovely press that's specially made with big rollers and you put the etching plate down on the press and you have paper. It's generally quite heavy paper and it's been soaking in water, so it's damp. And you put it on top of the plate and then run it through slowly underneath blankets and things. So that out the other side, you lift up the blankets and then you lift up the paper gradually and there is your print. It's a lovely experience doing this.
Anne Shingleton:
You have the embossing around the image of the plate into the paper. It has a very lovely tactile feel to it. It's a great process. I love using it.
Sarah Monk:
It sounds really satisfying.
Anne Shingleton:
Yes, is. And every time somebody takes something off the press, you all crowd round to have a look, see how it came out, which is always very exciting. The other thing you must remember when you're doing things, if it's a special landscape or something, that everything is going to come around the other way around. I earned a fair bit of money doing local landscapes. Well, of course you've got to get it right.
Anne Shingleton:
So I figured out a way. It's very hard to draw a landscape around the wrong way, because I like to work directly onto the plate. It gave me more of a fresher line. So the only way you can do that is actually to have an easel set up with a mirror. So you draw the image in the mirror.
Anne Shingleton:
I must say I was down there at Hardy's Cottage in Dorset. You know Thomas Hardy?
Sarah Monk:
Yeah, indeed.
Anne Shingleton:
The writer. It's a beautiful thatched cottage with apple trees and lovely garden. And there was I in the back with two easels, basically. And people were walking past thinking that I was really crazy. So there we go.
Sarah Monk:
Because of your mirrors, they thought you were just looking at yourself.
Anne Shingleton:
Yes, yes, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's a way to get round it.
Sarah Monk:
What was the step that brought you to Italy?
Anne Shingleton:
Ah, I went to an exhibition in Dorset of an artist and she had studied with Nerina Simi in Florence. And I really saw there was something extra in her work. There was a feeling for light. She knew about values and for me it stood out. I said, where did you study?
Anne Shingleton:
Oh, she said, in Florence with Nerina Simi. La Signorina, they called her. Well, if she's still alive, she must be very old. She gave me the address and so I wrote. And that was in the early part of the summer.
Sarah Monk:
Which year are we talking, Anne?
Anne Shingleton:
We're talking about 1980. She didn't come back from her mountain retreat until September, and then she sent me the letter, so she said, Come. So I went. Simple as that.
Sarah Monk:
How did you feel going into her class for the first time?
Anne Shingleton:
It was just mind blowing for me because it was like stepping back into history. The classroom, you've got to imagine this is a really big room with a window at the back. All along the walls, they're just covered with paintings in big, heavy gold frames. There was her father's paintings and also her own. Practically every bit of wall space was covered.
Anne Shingleton:
On the floor were all these easels and chairs all scattered around. At the back of the room was the dais, the platform that the model would sit on. I was a new girl, I didn't know the routine. So I sat right at the very back and I could see what everybody else was doing. And they seemed to be going really slowly.
Anne Shingleton:
I couldn't quite understand. So I sat there and I drew the model. And then shortly afterwards, the signorina came in and I was the first person she came to and she asked me, did I know how to measure? And of course I sort of faffed around saying, well, sort of. And so she explained, and then she said, well, how about measuring the head and comparing it to the hand?
Anne Shingleton:
And so I did. And I saw that, I mean, gee, it's just disaster, terrible errors. And at that moment, I mean, it was just wonderful. She was telling me reasons for why something was wrong. This is science logic talk.
Anne Shingleton:
And for me, after all the sort of art education that I'd had in the painting sort of field, to have somebody really explain things very simply the way it is, revelation. And nearly burst into tears as she went on her way, because it had been quite an emotional thing to take the courage to go and start at a school in a country where you don't know the language, you don't know the people, you've got no friends. And suddenly I felt I was in the right place at the right time. That was wonderful.
Sarah Monk:
It is so important to have a right teacher, isn't it? She sounds like she was special.
Anne Shingleton:
She really was, yes. In fact, she has become a legend, really. As a woman of her time, she was really extraordinary. It was a kind of mission of hers to dedicate her life to continuing her father's teaching. She continued teaching.
Anne Shingleton:
I mean, this little old lady in her nineties, walking around slowly because she had a bent leg. She would go from one chair to the other, using it as a support. Always very sweet and very courageous. All the people who studied with her remember her extremely fondly. The last few who were there, and I was one of them, we keep together and we're very much a strong group, that we, you know, our Facebook page and all that.
Sarah Monk:
So what specifically do you think you learnt from her?
Anne Shingleton:
Well, it's a bit difficult to put it down to one thing.
Sarah Monk:
Three things, give me your top three things that you learnt with her.
Anne Shingleton:
Okay, one is the will to continue. You have to have that, otherwise she wouldn't teach you, but that kind of determination to go on, to push further. Okay, so that's one thing. The other thing is, as I said, the science of drawing and painting. She taught construction, so she taught measurement.
Anne Shingleton:
She was quite clear about that. And so that you could really understand when you draw something, you can measure it to make sure that you've got it right. Most people, when they see something to draw it, they draw what they think they see, not what actually is the image that's coming in their eye. We're influenced by what we have in our brains.
Sarah Monk:
Is that, obviously I'm not an artist, is this about perspective?
Anne Shingleton:
Exactly. Yeah. You think that you're drawing things in one size compared to another, say you've got something in the distance and then something nearer. The only way to get that absolutely right is to actually measure it. Because perspective plays tricks on our eyes.
Anne Shingleton:
If you were to draw a mug, everybody who generally draws a mug, when they come to draw the opening at the top and they're looking at it at an angle, they generally draw it very fat, that circle, because they know that the top of the mug is a circle. But in actual fact, what you're actually seeing is a very, very flattened ellipse, very flattened. But how flattened? And the only way you can sort that one out is to measure the height of the ellipse and compare it to the width. If you do that, then you're fine.
Anne Shingleton:
But we all draw what we think we see and we always get it wrong.
Sarah Monk:
That's amazing. How true is that in life?
Anne Shingleton:
Yeah. The third thing, let me tell you that she talked, which is absolutely fundamental, tone. She would always ask you which is darker or lighter out of two parts of the drawing. And so after a while, your eye is getting honed to try and sort out all these tones. That is fundamental for painting, because when you know how light or dark something is, or it's called in Italian, it's chiaro scuro, and can go through all the gradations of grays to get to your gradations of blacks, if you like.
Anne Shingleton:
Whatever it is you're drawing, it gives it volume, it gives it solidity. Then you have a chance to draw something believable on the page. Then you can start transferring that into color. And that's another ball game altogether, which she actually was quite sensitive about. She taught me a lot about, sorry, this is a full thing, but a lot about color, because I think she was quite influenced by the Impressionists.
Anne Shingleton:
At that time in Italy, there were the macchiagioli. Macchia means spot, sort of dirty splodge really. And that's what the Italians called the Italian impressionists, they call them the sort of splodgers basically. This was a movement that was going on. And so the signorina, I think, was different from Filadelfo's because she added more color.
Anne Shingleton:
And that's quite clear, particularly in her portraits, her lovely portraits of children that she did.
Sarah Monk:
So is Filadelfo her father?
Anne Shingleton:
Filadelfo Simi was her father, yes. He was born in the mountains up behind me here. His father was a blacksmith and he was able through somebody being generous, think, to go and study in Paris. And he studied with Jerome. Jerome was an artist in the late half of the eighteen hundreds who had a famous studio in Paris.
Anne Shingleton:
Many great artists went through and Filadelfo studied there for some time. And then when he came back, he set up a school in Florence. He died after running the school for fifty years and Nerina Simi, continued on his teaching for another fifty-fifty one years or so until she died and then the studio closed. So it was going for one hundred and one years.
Sarah Monk:
That's amazing.
Anne Shingleton:
And I was very lucky to be able to go there because at that time in Europe this kind of figurative artwork was regarded as old fashioned. So when the Signorina was talking and you'd ask her things, if she talked about her father, it was like that step back even to Jerome. It was so close. It was very magical. Yes.
Sarah Monk:
I've just remembered something you told me on another occasion about the Signorina is that she didn't show her work and that she didn't like her photograph taken.
Anne Shingleton:
Well, she was extremely humble, and that is true. She didn't like her photograph taken. So to find references for doing a portrait is really quite hard. The Senorina never had any exhibitions. And so when we got together as a group of artists, the last students, we dug up as many of her paintings as we could to put them together, and we produced a small book on it as well.
Anne Shingleton:
So at last she's being recognized and more and more as time goes on.
Sarah Monk:
Can you tell me a little bit about the sculpture of the Signorina that you've done recently, Anne?
Anne Shingleton:
Since we're all very aware that our memories of her are fading and we were the last people to know her. So I thought, well, okay, maybe I'll try the signorina and see if I can do her as I'd like to do her. And I remember her teaching always with her arm out and slightly hunched. I mean, was in her nineties, for Heaven's sake.
Sarah Monk:
I can see behind me the fabulous bust of Nerina Simi. Do you call it a bust?
Anne Shingleton:
Yes. I think so. It's the head and the shoulders. It sort of goes down to just under the first button of her little overall that she always used to wear when she was teaching and she has one arm out as if she's saying yes, this part of the drawing is wrong or whatever indicating. That's how I wanted to show her with an intense look on her face but a kindly look I hope.
Anne Shingleton:
I remembered her as this old lady, slightly hunched and she walked rather badly with a very bowed leg that she had but she was sharp as anything and would criticize our work. Nothing would miss her and she also had a great sense of humor.
Sarah Monk:
So tell me the process. How did you start? Did you start with a sketch or did you work directly into clay?
Anne Shingleton:
Well, the trouble is if you're working a portrait, you generally like to get the person to sit for you so you can take measurements and you can look at them, but when somebody's already dead, this is a problem. So you have to work from photographs. I was lucky to be able to find a few that gave me the vital information that I needed. And so I had them all pinned up and then know roughly the size somebody's head is going to be because we're all pretty much the same size. And I worked from there, working on an armature, using clay, keeping it damp every time that you work on it you have to cover it with plastic.
Anne Shingleton:
But then after that, from the clay when it's finished you have somebody make a mould, a silicone mould and then various other layers including the last layer which is a gesso plaster of Paris which is very solid and that creates the mould. Then that's taken to the foundry and if you're going to cast it in bronze as I had planned to do, the foundry then will put wax inside the silicone mold on the inside so that you get four millimeters of wax and you have a hollow copy. That is called your casting wax. And of course, from one mould you can actually do a number of casting waxes, which means that you can do a number of bronzes. They're all much the same.
Anne Shingleton:
They all come out slightly different, but that's how you do an edition. Then when you have your casting wax, I always touch up my own, which means that you work in the foundry and you have hot tools, little steel tools, and you put them in a Bunsen burner flame. You use them to cut the wax and manipulate it and you can add more bits of wax, it's wonderful. In fact I sometimes make sculptures straight in wax. My little toad ones are nice because they've got all these little bobbly bits on them and that comes up really nicely if you work it in wax.
Anne Shingleton:
Then when you've finished touching, what they call touching it up, you leave it with the foundry and they do the very important part of putting what's called the runners and risers on. And these are tubes of wax which will in the future be the tubes that convey the liquid bronze to the various parts of the sculpture so that you don't get bits like ears or something, so you don't get a bubble in parts that are sort of protruding out when the bronze is poured in. In the Mariani foundry they use what's called the ceramic shell method, dipping the wax sculpture in various baths of very, very fine ceramic and that will take all the little tiny surface details. And then it's dipped into different grain sizes so that you get a shell of this ceramic around it. It's about a centimeter thick around.
Anne Shingleton:
When that is solidified, it is put in a big oven and the wax comes out. That's why it's called 'cera persa', 'lost wax' and it leaves the holes for the molten bronze when it's poured in at over a thousand degrees. It's very spectacular and it reaches all the parts of the sculpture. It's a wonderful thing if you ever get the chance to see a pouring in a foundry. Everybody's very quiet.
Anne Shingleton:
The roar of the furnace has stopped and then there's this quiet and it's like a big dance because they've got these big masks on because the heat is terrific. They're extremely skilled and they pour this molten bronze in without spilling a drop.
Sarah Monk:
Wow. I wanted to ask also, where did you do these processes and what relationship did you have with the artisans?
Anne Shingleton:
I worked in a wonderful old studio that belongs to Giancarlo Buratti. He is specialized in making clay models and will do what are called 'ingrandimenti', the enlarging. Artists will come to him and say, this is my model, I want to do it, it could be anything, three meters tall, and he's capable of doing that. They have to make a steel armature to hold the weight of the clay so it's really very specialized work. And that's a lovely studio, one of the old studios in Pietrasanta that is still being used as a studio.
Sarah Monk:
And so from working with Buratti, you then went to Mariani?
Anne Shingleton:
Yes, had somebody make the mould for me. That's again another specialized job. They're called the 'formatore', the mould makers. And then I work in the foundry. And the last bit is working the metal.
Anne Shingleton:
The guys are really very skilled. I let them do that and then they polish it up. I work on polishing it up, that's easy. And then when it's all polished the amount that you want it polished, because of course that affects the next stage, is the patination. And the patination is where acid is put onto the bronze surface and it kind of ages it artificially and they use a hot torch, a flame to get the color to appear.
Anne Shingleton:
Again, very skilled and you can achieve lots of different kinds of colors. They know how to do it to say, want it like that one, please, and point to something.
Sarah Monk:
What was the most challenging part of capturing her being?
Anne Shingleton:
More than anything else it was just getting the proportions and getting them right. Because if you don't get that right then you're not going to get a likeness. So I really had to work hard at that. Gradually it sort of fell into place.
Anne Shingleton:
You're working on clay and you just have all these bits with your thumb prints in and it doesn't have much shape and everything. You keep on working and working. But suddenly there was a moment when she came to life for me.
Anne Shingleton:
And so of course at that point, whenever I sprayed her with water I was saying, Excuse me, Signorina. And so in the morning too, when I started work and I'd unwrap her, sort of say, buongiorno signora So it's that moment when a sculpture suddenly has presence. Other sculptors have talked about it. In fact, Jerome did a painting and it shows a sculptor sculpting this lovely woman and there she is in marble up to her waist and then the top half of her turns into a real woman and she's turning around and she's embracing the sculptor.
Anne Shingleton:
Yes, there's a feeling of power really because three dimension, they have a presence much more than in a painting. I think this is the strength sculpture and that's fun. That's great fun, particularly with portraits. Especially if it's somebody you know.
Sarah Monk:
Thanks to Anne Shingleton. You can see her work on her Instagram @ arcshingleton or on her website, anneshingleton.com. And thanks to you for listening. As with all episodes, you can find photographs of the work discussed on our website, materiallyspeaking.com, or on Instagram. If you're enjoying materially speaking, subscribe to our newsletter on our website so we can send you news and let you know when the next episode goes live.
Sarah Monk:
And if you feel moved to leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast platform, we'll be delighted, as that will help people find us.
Sarah Monk:
In our next episode, I'm meeting Cynthia Sah, who was born in Hong Kong and studied in The USA before coming to Pietrasanta in 1978.
Cynthia Sah:
I loved being in New York, but New York is like a wild wild west for artists and was too confusing and too distant for me. Any kind of material nature is a gift from nature. Bringing out the most beautiful part of nature because nature could be rough, could be destructive. We are all connected. Everything is connected.