Sylacauga festival showcases magic of marble

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By Christa Jennings

Senior Staff Writer

 

Sylacauga’s eighteenth Magic of Marble Festival concluded last weekend, with visitors having enjoyed watching the sculptors at work and seeing an array of sculptures on display.

The pride of Sylacauga, slabs of white marble, serving as blank canvases for the sculptors, have gradually taken the shapes of flowers, fish, wings, female figures, a Minotaur, abstracts, and more over the course of the festival.

Sponsored by the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the Sylacauga Arts Council, this year’s Marble Festival began April 7 and ran through Saturday, April 18. Marble sculptors and their works were on site at Central Park, located across from Blue Bell Creameries on North Norton Avenue, for visitors to see throughout the event.

The Sylacauga Marble Festival highlights Sylacauga’s marble and helps demonstrate its artistic, commercial and industrial applications.

Sylacauga’s marble deposit is part of the Murphy Marble Belt, which extends 32-and-a-half miles wide by 400 feet deep. It is the world’s largest commercial deposit of madre cream marble.

Considered among the world’s purest marble, Sylacauga’s marble is featured in many U.S. landmarks such as the Washington Monument, the U.S. Supreme Court building and the ceiling of the Lincoln Memorial.

It can also be found in other places nationwide, such as Gutzon Borglum’s bust of Abraham Lincoln in the U.S. Capitol, the “Head of Christ” by Giuseppe Moretti, the Old Chicago Main Post Office in Chicago, Dime Savings Bank in Brooklyn, the rotunda of the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in New York, various headstones in national cemeteries, and more.

It’s this same white marble that sculptors from across Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Missouri used to bring their visions to life during the week-and-a-half long festival.

James Doyle; a sculptor from Winchester, Ky.; said that this was his first Magic of Marble Festival. However, he plans to return next year after being impressed by the city, its people and the magic of the event itself.

Doyle, who steadily worked on an abstract piece, found out he was participating in the event just two days before it started. During his seven-hour drive to Sylacauga, he pulled over and did a quick sketch of the concept for his piece.

Doyle shared what he had in mind when making the abstract art, which he said is just one way it could be interpreted. With three figures on a base, his concept was to show varying emotions from happiness to anxiety or mild depression to crushing depression, with the sizes of the “heads” on each figure increasing incrementally, demonstrating how heavy their thoughts are and how much is “going on” mentally for them.

“But if that’s too depressing, you just turn it around, and then it’s kind of a recovery story,” he said.

While some start with sketches or other means before chiseling and shaping the marble slabs to bring their visions to life, others use other means as a starting point.

Jonathon Douglas of Sylacauga said he started with a 3D model and used it as a guide for his fish sculpture.

“Everyone has their own process,” he said.

Throughout the festival sculptors happily paused their art to talk with festival visitors, share information about their craft and processes and allow them a firsthand look behind the magic.

Jennifer Linders; a sculptor from Marshfield, Mo.; finished her first art piece, depicting a figure akin to an avian angel, and began work on a second piece during the festival.

A familiar face at the festival, Linders spoke with visitors while she worked on her pieces and as she swapped one tool head for a grinding wheel to get more depth, showcasing a vast array of tools used for completing the sculptures.

This year’s featured artist was Georg Viktor from Pietrasanta, Italy, who steadily worked on bringing a Minotaur to life in his marble slab for the eighteenth Magic of Marble Festival.

Born in Germany, Viktor has honed his craft in the heart of Italy for many years, now most recently bringing his talents to Sylacauga for guests to enjoy watching him work on his latest masterpiece.

In addition to selling some marble pieces during the festival at the B.B. Comer Memorial Library,  through its Sylacauga Magic of Marble Sculpture Collection the library has marble sculptures on display year-round for public viewing, raising awareness of the marble’s beauty and the talent of the sculptors, including Italian sculptors who have participated in previous festivals.