Dutch artist Anne-Claire trained and worked as a lawyer until she followed her heart to become an artist. She moved to Pietrasanta, where she lived, and worked, for 15 years. Now she divides her time between the Hague and Pietrasanta.
After the pandemic she was looking for a way to capture peoples’ thoughts and emotions in order to make a three-dimensional sculpture of them in clay.
Having discovered that a traditional scanner was unable to grab the emotion she saw in a split second, Anne-Claire was happy to meet Claudio Giustiniani of ArtaxLab in Pietrasanta, who showed her how he used 30 Nikon cameras in conjunction with a 3-D printer. Working with Claudio she could get what she wanted and began her project to capture the emotions around the experience of COVID-19 called My Collection of Souls.
To create her My Collection of Souls Anne-Claire talked to the person about COVID-19 and, at the exact moment she saw their strongest expression, she pressed the button on the cameras. Claudio and she discuss in this episode how they created the work - from taking the photograph through to the finished collection.
Another collaboration Anne-Claire made was with photographer Gail Skoff.
Gail came to this part of Italy in 2017 to photograph the quarries of Carrara but soon became fascinated by the artists working in marble. When she met Anne-Claire they instantly clicked, and embarked on a collaboration with Gail’s photographic collage technique. Gail likes to enter the world of the artist and elaborate on their process, creating more of an impression of the artist's work rather than its ultimate reality.
Anne-Claire tells us how it was working with Gail and how happy she was to have Icarus flying.
From her childhood, Anne-Claire was inspired by how Michelangelo expressed such soft emotions in hard marble. Below is a piece in tribute to him. Anne-Claire thought David’s victory over Goliath was an excellent metaphor for our battle and the optimism needed to succeed during COVID-19.
Dutch artist Anne-Claire trained and worked as a lawyer until she followed her heart to become an artist. She moved to Pietrasanta, where she lived, and worked, for 15 years. Now she divides her time between the Hague and Pietrasanta.
After the pandemic she was looking for a way to capture peoples’ thoughts and emotions in order to make a three-dimensional sculpture of them in clay.
Having discovered that a traditional scanner was unable to grab the emotion she saw in a split second, Anne-Claire was happy to meet Claudio Giustiniani of ArtaxLab in Pietrasanta, who showed her how he used 30 Nikon cameras in conjunction with a 3-D printer. Working with Claudio she could get what she wanted and began her project to capture the emotions around the experience of COVID-19 called My Collection of Souls.
To create her My Collection of Souls Anne-Claire talked to the person about COVID-19 and, at the exact moment she saw their strongest expression, she pressed the button on the cameras. Claudio and she discuss in this episode how they created the work - from taking the photograph through to the finished collection.
Another collaboration Anne-Claire made was with photographer Gail Skoff.
Gail came to this part of Italy in 2017 to photograph the quarries of Carrara but soon became fascinated by the artists working in marble. When she met Anne-Claire they instantly clicked, and embarked on a collaboration with Gail’s photographic collage technique. Gail likes to enter the world of the artist and elaborate on their process, creating more of an impression of the artist's work rather than its ultimate reality.
Anne-Claire tells us how it was working with Gail and how happy she was to have Icarus flying.
From her childhood, Anne-Claire was inspired by how Michelangelo expressed such soft emotions in hard marble. Below is a piece in tribute to him. Anne-Claire thought David’s victory over Goliath was an excellent metaphor for our battle and the optimism needed to succeed during COVID-19.
A podcast where artists tell their stories through the materials they choose.
Anne-Claire:
Sometimes I think your eyes are like a camera, and they register. And then there's somewhere some hard disk, and you've lived something or felt something, and sometimes years later that comes out of your hands, and you express it in a work of art, in a sculpture. And I made these sculptures, and I thought the moment of creation was one second. It was the moment where I said click, and all these cameras went off together.
Sarah Monk:
Hi. This is Sarah with another episode of materially speaking, where artists and artisans tell their stories through the materials they choose. Five years ago, we started materially speaking to capture the voices of artists and artisans before the artisans who built Pietrasanta's worldwide reputation all retired. Today, we're excited to present the story of Dutch artist, Anne Clare van den Elshout, and hear about her collaboration with one of the new generation of artisans, Claudio Giustiniani of Artax Lab. Anne Claire worked with Claudio to use photography in a three d printer to create in clay her series of heads, my collection of souls.
Sarah Monk:
She also tells us about another collaboration with our photographer colleague, Gail Scoff. Gail and Anne Clare set off on a crazy adventure involving an evening dress, a dip in the sea, and Gail making Anne Clare's Icarus really fly. First, we met Anne Clare at Claudio's Pietro Santa studio in a tight knit community of other creatives. What struck me amongst the dust, clatter of three d printers, and warm chatter was the sense of camaraderie. As we've seen in so many Pietro Santa stories, the personal rapport between artist and artisan is so important, and collaborations between artists create whole new worlds.
Sarah Monk:
I asked Anne Clare to introduce herself.
Anne-Claire:
My name is Anne Claire van den Elshout. I'm Dutch. I've lived fifteen years in Italy. When I was a little girl, I made things out of clay.
Anne-Claire:
And I was 18. I
Anne-Claire:
did my first work in stone, but I thought, one can't make their living with that. So I studied law, became a lawyer. In the end of my studies, I went to Paris and studied at the l'Institutions Politiques, and there I found myself every weekend in the Jardin of the Musee Rodin, and I loved his work. So when I was in my law firm for about five years, the art and sculpture started calling me, and I decided to change and to go after what I really wanted to do and not think about money. And I was lucky to find Italian artist sculptress from La Spezia who have has her studio in Piazza Santa.
Anne-Claire:
She's called Elisa Corsini. And she took me under her wings and taught me a lot, and I lived in her studio, on the little bed in the upper part. So after the luxurious life of a lawyer, I was back to being a student, but I loved it. And after three weeks, I thought this is it. This is paradise.
Anne-Claire:
So from 2002 until 2017, I've been working and living in Italy in Pietrasanta. And then we moved to The Netherlands, to The Hague, and I have a studio there now. And I work a bit there and a bit in Italy.
Anne-Claire:
For me, sculpture is this three-dimensional way of expressing what you see and experience, and it's noncerebral. You almost switch your brain off.
Anne-Claire:
Especially when I work with clay, it's a connection between your belly and your finger tops. When I was younger, I was very much inspired by Michelangelo and his Pieta and the expression the face has. When I was 18, I've been walking around Rome and seen every shop to find a special picture from a special angle of that face of the pieta. I think my biggest dream in the beginning was that in the tough marble, you could find these soft expressions like Michelangelo did.
Sarah Monk:
So what inspires you then?
Anne-Claire:
A lot. Human beings, female bodies, organic things. If I drive up the hill here in the olive trees, I see women dancing, but also everything I think one goes through in life. Sometimes I think your eyes are like a camera and they register, and then there's somewhere some hard disk. And you've lift something or felt something, and sometimes years later, that comes out of your hands, and you express it in a work of art, in a sculpture.
Sarah Monk:
I do want to talk about the work you did with Claudio.
Anne-Claire:
I think it's interesting the way how we found each other.
Sarah Monk:
How did you find each other?
Anne-Claire:
If I remember well, I had this idea of capturing people's thoughts and emotions and making sculptured portraits of them with the three d printer in clay. And then my colleague said, oh, well, you should buy this scan thing. And then I tried and you can walk around somebody. And then I said, yes. But I want that split second where I can grab that emotion.
Anne-Claire:
And the scan is not giving me what I'm looking for. And then one day, I was walking around in Pietrasanta in, next to the old hospital. There's a foundry, there's marble, and there were Claudio and his partner at the time. And I was talking about what I was looking for, and they had just bought the three d printer. And then I said, yeah.
Anne-Claire:
But this can, I don't like? And then I found that Claudio had 30 Nikon cameras, real cameras, which could perfectly work for what I had in mind because I could put the person inside, talk to the person. And at the moment, I saw the emotion or the thought I wanted that person had towards COVID. Click and all these 30 cameras take a picture at the same time. And then Claudio is a wonderful technician with the computer and makes a three d sculpture in the computer with all these pictures.
Sarah Monk:
So how did you get the emotion that you wanted from people?
Anne-Claire:
I saw people around me, children, people I worked with, my mother, friends, whatever came up in my surroundings, who I talked to about COVID, and they had an interesting emotion experience thought, and I liked their head. Not that it had to be pretty, but it had to have something. Then, for example, I met a woman who lived in Bergamo, and she experienced a really bad situation and heard the church bells ring the whole day because of the funerals, people dying from COVID. And when she was telling about her experience living there, her face was just full with horror. So I thought, ah, I need you.
Anne-Claire:
And then I invited her. I asked Claudio when he could set up the cameras, and we'd make an appointment. And sometimes we would try to do two or three people at the same time. So it was almost like a piece of theater because what I saw in the bar and the conversation I had, I had to reproduce that, which was sometimes quite a challenge and difficult. Another example is my mother who, when I talked to her about COVID, she said, I'm over 80.
Anne-Claire:
If I get COVID, I'll die. And she really had this expression on her face. And she likes theater, so she was able to reproduce that in front of the camera. So that's the way how, how we got there.
Sarah Monk:
Claudio, do you want to tell me how it was for you?
Claudio Giustiniani:
For me, it's technique. I don't want to touch the artistic process. So I just manage my cameras and try to coordinate with Claire to stop the exact time of the expression of the face of the subject. And so, yeah, for me, it's just concentration in techniques, not anymore.
Anne-Claire:
If I can add something, which I think is wonderful in his role, you try to help the artist and not try to put your own because that's not what an artist wants. But for one sculpture, he did a great artistic work because I wanted the hair changed because the woman in question didn't have a big volume. And for sculpture, you need volumes. And he made this futuristic haircut, which really, really added to the whole process. So there is also that part of artistic collaboration when dressing elements.
Claudio Giustiniani:
It's my future. Hi.
Mike Axinn voicing Claudio's voice:
I'm Claudio Giustiniani. I was born in Livorno, but I moved to Pietro Santa and I opened my own business in 2019 called Artax Lab. I collaborate with artists to design their works. I mainly do scans and three d modeling, and then I do prototyping with prints either in clay or resin. The technique I use is photogrammetry, and I learned it at university.
Mike Axinn voicing Claudio's voice:
I'm an architect. I did my doctorate in design and representation of architecture, and there I learned scant and photogrammetry.
Claudio Giustiniani:
The
Mike Axinn voicing Claudio's voice:
The process of creating a work depends a lot on the artist I work with because I try to respect their approach to the creation of the work. Sometimes they come up with concrete ideas, sketches, and clay, and they just want to scan them and make them in another material or in a different dimension. Sometimes they have an idea, and together we try to give it a shape and find a way to realize it. My work is very digital, so I don't worry too much about what material they will use later. I provide them with the basis, and they choose whether to do it in marble, bronze, resin, or wood because the digital product I create can be adapted to any material.
Mike Axinn voicing Claudio's voice:
What I like most is the relationship with the artists and discovering how they see art and how they approach the creation of art. I like this variety and the fact that projects are different every day. Maybe that's why I moved from architecture, which is a longer process. Art is faster, more immediate, and direct. And Claire.
Mike Axinn voicing Claudio's voice:
She was one of the first artists who came to my laboratory, so it was a big challenge for me because it was one of the first projects I had to deal with. But Anne Claire understood immediately how to apply my technology to her work, so it was easy. Anne Clare's project is divided into two phases. The first is the scanning of the subject and her relationship with the subject that she wants to represent. The second phase is three d printing and ceramic, which leaves the artist the chance to intervene directly in her work.
Mike Axinn voicing Claudio's voice:
Because three d printing and ceramic allows for a product that can still be modified, it's not rigid. It can be retouched, revised, or simply patched up and redone. In the future, technology is definitely entering art more and more. Artists are getting more and more used to using it as a tool, a tool that must be able to be used in the sense that it doesn't have to replace the artist or the artist's craftsmanship. It simply has to help.
Mike Axinn voicing Claudio's voice:
So probably now, both technology and artists are mature enough to walk together in the right direction.
Sarah Monk:
So once you've got the pictures, what happens next?
Claudio Giustiniani:
It's just numerical stuff put the different parameters on the software to obtain the best result. Then we have to prepare the three d model to be printed. So we have to close all the holes and prepare the surface for the printer.
Sarah Monk:
And are you involved in that process?
Anne-Claire:
No. Thank you. It's not my best friend, the computer. I think some people buy this printer to make objects design and faces, and then they flatten the surface. But I'm very interested by the lines it makes because it adds light and shadow in a different way to the face.
Anne-Claire:
And also it takes away part of the expression, part of the details. But for me, it adds to the thought or the emotion. These lines fascinate me, like the lines, the sea water leaves on the beach. And it's also for this project, I think it's like a tree has different rings. Our lives are built up from different layers.
Anne-Claire:
And the older we get, the more layers we have and the more experience, bad or good, beautiful or sad. So I think it adds to the work I want to show and do.
Sarah Monk:
And how long does that take? I was here one day, I think, when you were doing it, and it seemed quite a slow process.
Anne-Claire:
If all goes well, it could be quick, but a machine is not perfect either. So in theory, the machine can print ahead in four, five hours?
Claudio Giustiniani:
Four hours. Yeah. More or less. Four hours.
Anne-Claire:
But often, I don't know. We argued with the machine or the clay needs to be added some alcohol or I choose a clay with a different grano, which was more difficult. Sometimes it took two or three days to get that.
Claudio Giustiniani:
Yeah. But the process is quite long because after the print, we have to dry the clay and then cook the clay. And so it's one day, two days in one month.
Anne-Claire:
Yeah. It has to dry for a month, and then it has to be fired twice.
Sarah Monk:
And then do you glaze it or not?
Anne-Claire:
I put a little of transparent glaze on it to protect it, but I prefer it almost with that. You know? We don't put glaze on ourselves either.
Sarah Monk:
How did the pandemic prompt you into exploring new technology?
Anne-Claire:
Ah, okay. Okay. In the beginning of the COVID period, the pandemic, I was invited by a curator, woman from Genova, Virginia Monteverde, and she invited a lot of international and Italian artists to participate because she said we need to make an exhibition about COVID and what's happening. And she said, will you all think about what it does to you, and we'll take a symbol for the exhibition, the mask. And at first, I was really like, oh my god.
Anne-Claire:
Do I have to make a mask? The children at school can do that. It's not interesting. And then I thought, okay. If I put the mask on the hand, then becomes a sculpture.
Anne-Claire:
So that's in my field. So can we can work with that? And then at first, I wanted to take my own hand. And then suddenly, the story of David and Goliath came into my head, and I felt that we, as humans, were a bit like David. And we had this big enemy, invisible, because the virus was hiding behind doors and you didn't know, could you still kiss people or not?
Anne-Claire:
Everybody was getting afraid of each other. So I thought, yes. We are David, and the virus is Goliad. And then, of course, my thoughts went to Michelangelo's David, and I thought, oh, that's a nice head. We can put a mask on that head.
Anne-Claire:
And luckily, I found the three d scan of the head of the David, which is based in Florence, on the Internet, the three d scan for free. Good lord. At the same time, we had ordered the three d clay printer because I was really frustrated that I couldn't go to Italy. I was in Holland, and it was very hard to travel and did a lot of my work in Italy. I was annoyed I couldn't go.
Anne-Claire:
So I thought if I can't go to Italy, Italy has to come to me. And that's why I ordered the three d printer in clay, which one of the first ones was made in Italy, and they send it to me. And it arrived within a few weeks. And so the first thing I printed was David. Then I made a wax mask symbolizing the lockdown with the bars of jail.
Anne-Claire:
So that was the first piece I did in the pandemic area and the first piece with the new three d printer. Before, I must tell you, I hated everything that had to do with the new world and three d printing, and we had it for a long time in the marble world. But for me, it was always known. It has to be this connection between my belly and my fingers and not too many machines and technology. The only thing that interested me already when I saw the first sculptures being cut by a robot in marble were the lines.
Anne-Claire:
And although they're not exactly the same lines because the clay printer puts one line on top of each other whilst the robot carves, so you have a different sort of lines. So the clay printer gave me that. And for me, it was an addition to just a normal face. Gives more shade, and it takes away and it adds. And there's some imperfectness in it because halfway, you have to change the container that keeps the clay because it's empty, and then he starts printing again.
Anne-Claire:
But then sometimes it's not exactly the same. And in the beginning, I was like, oh my god. It's not perfect. And I was redoing with Claudio the piece. And then after a while, I thought that nobody's perfect.
Anne-Claire:
So why should they be perfect?
Sarah Monk:
Very true. That piece, I think, is COVID nineteen tribute to Michelangelo, isn't it? Yes. Can you tell me about the rise and fall of Icarus? I was intrigued to know how it was for you working with Gail.
Anne-Claire:
Oh, that was it? Fantastic.
Sarah Monk:
Tell me how you met Gail and what happened.
Anne-Claire:
I don't know. Maybe she's been stalking me like she says she does with artists. But we got to know each other, and there was a very, easy, quick click. And she told me about her work, and I loved it. And I took her up to the house, and I showed her what I was doing with Claudio, and she liked it.
Anne-Claire:
Ikaros, I made because I was asked years ago to make a big sculpture for the village of Capizano Monte, which is above the hills of Pietra Santa. And I live above the village. And they had a new park, and they wanted a sculpture in there from an artist living close by. So I was very honored. The thing that intrigued me living there for years is that I'm an explorer.
Anne-Claire:
I like to travel, and I saw people in the village on Thursday waiting for the bus to go down to Pietro Santa to the market, and that was how far they got. Sometimes I ask, but did you ever go and see Rome? And they said no. And I thought, but if you live up here, you have a beautiful view over the sea. You wanna fly and look and explore.
Anne-Claire:
So when they asked me to make a sculpture, the model of Icarus came out of my hands. It was never placed there. I made something else for there, but I made Icarus in bronze flying to the sun, as you know the story. His father tells him to not come too close, and he doesn't listen. And then the wax melts, and he falls into the sea.
Anne-Claire:
So I made it in bronze going up to the sun, and I made it in marble after falling down in the sea. But Gail made it really fly. When she sent me the picture of one of her first works she did with me in the sea and Ikaros, and she took pictures of Ikaros and some nice view over the sea. She put it in, and it was really flying. What I had in my head, she did.
Anne-Claire:
That's wonderful.
Sarah Monk:
So am I right that you dressed up and walked into the sea?
Anne-Claire:
Yeah. Yeah. I put one of my best silk dresses on and went into the salt water with it. That was hilarious. We had lots of fun working together.
Sarah Monk:
To me, it's like a reflection of your work with Claudio, which is that as an artist, you're working with another artist, and she's taking your work
Anne-Claire:
To another level. Yes. I know. She made me the happiest girl that day when she made my Icarus
Sarah Monk:
fly. That's fantastic.
Anne-Claire:
Yeah. That was beautiful. Having been working here for twenty years now and then finding myself in COVID with this three d printer and scans and cameras and all this technology which never interested me. And I made these sculptures and I thought the moment of creation was one second. It was the moment where I said click and all these cameras went off together.
Anne-Claire:
Although it was a very long process, it took me two years, I think, to make these fifteen, sixteen heads. Of course, I'd been thinking about it and but it was not building up clay or cutting away marble from a block. So completely different.
Sarah Monk:
So thanks to Anne Claire and to Claudio. You can see Anne Claire's work on her website, AnneClaire.nl, or on Instagram at Anne Claire Van Den Elshout. Claudio can be found at his company website, rtaxlab.com, or on Instagram at rtaxlab. Gail Scoff's photography can be found at her website, gailScoff.com, and on Instagram at Scoff Up close. Photographs of today's podcast are in the episode page of our website, materiallyspeaking.com.
Sarah Monk:
And you can find us on Instagram at materiallyspeakingpodcast. Do join our materially speaking community and sign up to our email newsletter on your web site. We'll send you a note before each new episode and invitations to special events.