COPY of the COPY
The student's aesthetic eye is formed by discovering the work of artists, but also by seeing the copies that their classmates have made of sculptors. It is the copy of the copy. The showcase has the function of a container of works to which classmates peek in to see what is being done in the workshop. The same layout of the huge box, closed, with glass, forces you to approach, stop and look. To look. That's where a process can begin.
There are many artists who throughout history have been formed by copying from masters and learning not only the techniques and artistic fundamentals, but also enjoying the experience of reproducing what they had in front of them, with respect, concentrating on that activity, at that moment. With the passage of time, or simultaneously, his head would fly imagining other possibilities and contributing his granite in new creations.
In cultures such as the Japanese, copying is a quest for perfection. For centuries, the transmission of knowledge has been centered on copying and imitation developed in a creative way, with the contribution that each one imprinted on the work. Originality resided and resides in each individual, as the unique being that he is, and not in his work. The collective possesses the immaterial culture in such a way that, even if the material object disappeared, its aesthetics and memory would survive from generation to generation.
We live in the West, where there is a cult of the unique individual -artist- and his or her work is often a slave to originality. Art has been questioning this for decades, but even so, many students approach artistic practice with the belief that they are not doing original or artistic "things". The proposal we make from the Arte Madera workshop is to place all of us, including teachers, in the role of the apprentice, who belongs to the collective of the class, who watches and learns, who asks and learns, who copies the great ones and learns, who copies from the copy and learns and who, in everything, puts a grain of his original being. And while all this is happening, there are also spaces to face creation, but without the pressure of the blank page.