Customer Reviews

Sculpture in Stone

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This slim volume is disappointingly brief in its treatment of the process of sculpture, and confoundingly obscurant in its discussions of capital-A-Art. "Nature, forming caverns, wanted to open up its heart to reveal moments of living intimacy," this book begins. What?!?

Except for 10 pages on direct carving, the whole first half of this book is utterly useless. The second half delves into process in slightly greater depth, but Camí frustratingly concentrates on such professional aspects as large-scale sculpture, enlarging from models, and site selection and preparation for public monumental sculpture; all of this is beyond the journeyman, and anyone advanced enough to be creating public commissions will have no need for such a summary overview.

The primary problem here is with Camí himself -- he identifies himself as a sculptor as distinct from a "practitioner." In other words, Camí generates the concept of his sculptures, but leaves the actual carving of the stone to subordinates. Almost none of the photos show Camí himself doing anything more than supervising the creation of "his" works, and he spends as much time explaining why the people who do work of carving the stone are less important than the one who envisions the form as he does explaining how that form is created. I wish his "practitioners" had written this book instead of the "sculptor" himself.

While in general disappointing, this book does actually have a few insights -- and, more importantly, photographs -- that expand slightly upon the instruction offered in Liebson's book, but that alone is hradly enough to recommend it. You'd be better served spending the money on a new chisel than on this slim and spuerficial homage to Camí's own genius.

SCULPTURE IN STONE relates in words and pictures the history of the world's oldest form of sculpture and serves as a valuable resource for practitioners of the art of carving, for art historians, and for collectors of both ancient and contemporary stone sculpture.

Beginning with a brief but informative survey of making art from earth's resources, author Cami walks us through the complexities of the refinement of the tools from the original stone chisels to the most modern equipment. The portion on conceptualization of how to transform a formless body of solid material into an artistic statement usurps a large portion of this volume - with copious references to the author/sculptor's own work.

But the real glory of this beautiful volume is the plethora of fine photographs of famous works, contemporary works, tools, pillars, sarcophagi, monuments, figures and abstractions that fill the pages of this resource book. The tendency towards the 'how to' aspect of the volume intrudes a bit too often, but that only widens the audience for readers interested in the history of Egyptian and Greco-Roman secrets as well as the means by which contemporary artists still marry their inspiration to the stone. Grady Harp, June 05

This is the best book on stone sculpture since CONTEMPORARY STONE SCULPTURE by Dona Z. Meilach and with both books, one has all the knowledge they need to get started carving a block of stone. I have been sculpting professionally for 45 years and collecting reference books, on my profession, since day one. Go for it! EJ Sculptor

The strengths of the this book are it's color photographs and the consistent approach shown of shaping and reducing a block of stone, i.e. point -> tooth chisel -> bush hammer -> flat chisel -> finishing.

The most useful section is in the second half of the book that shows the execution and completion of several of his sculptures, even though most of the time they are carved by someone else. The number of photographs are generous and help you to understand how to use the tools. Some of his techniques such as enlarging and carving with templates are useful.

The first half of the book is a quasi history of stone/sculpture with opinions injected by Cami more on the symbolic meaning of stone sculpture and the inspiration for doing it. In my opinion this section could be halved, and so could the end of the book about site location and monumental statuary, and instead filled with progressively more difficult technique and examples.

The problem is that his work in all reality is quite simple, and nothing he carves requires as much skill as sculptors had in Renaissance or Baroque times. Part of this is his attitude about sculpture in general, which is that he comes up with the idea and someone else carves it. In some ways I agree with some of the criticisms stated in the "just plain silly" review.

I think that this book gets great reviews because of the color photographs, and the fact that many artists today are not interested in technical skill as much as expression, and this book caters to and reinforces that mentality. I don't see how a critical reader can give it more than 4 stars, but I would not give it less than 3 either.

Bottom line: the pictures, and step by step process dialogue ultimately make the book worth buying, but I would consider getting a good used version for $20 shipped instead of the new version $35 + s/h.

At last a stone sculpture book in color. I have the other leading stone sculpture books and most of the photos are in
black and white. This book is now my favorite, and is very well illustrated. I love this book and I think you will too.

I have bought a lot of books on carving stone. And this book had a lot and more,of all the other books. I would have saved a lot of time and money if I would have bought this book first.

Great simple approach to tools and techniques. Identifies what is needed and why. Actual techniques are disccussed for copying those things you like or how to master the process. Strength is the great studio and workshop needs descriptions. Has some inspirational sculpture photos for the begining sculpturer to pick up concepts from as well.

This book is very dissapointing. It may be good for someone who wants a book about the general idea of sculpture but it gives very little practicle information

Given as a gift to a stone carver. He especially enjoyed the photos but found much of the information useful.

This is a good book to accompany your other books on stone carving. It cover a lot of carving techniques like pointing, (how to make a carving from a smaller model) and some on direct stone carving which I prefer. It also covers carving as a trade, power tools and large outdoor sculpture. This book has excellent closeup photographs of every aspect of stone carving. This would be my second book after Direct Stone Sculpture by Milt Liebson.