Materially Speaking
A podcast where artists tell their stories through the materials they choose.
- Update frequency
- every 13 days
- Average duration
- 25 minutes
- Episodes
- 64
- Years Active
- 2020 - 2025
Silvano Cattaï: Into the Light
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Silvano Cattaï born in Belgium, of Italian parentage, came to be an artist in Italy by way of making films in New York. After years in sculpture he…
Vanessa Paschakarnis: Feel with your eyes
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German born Vanessa Paschakarnis migrated to Nova Scotia before coming to Pietrasanta in northern Italy. Hers is a philosophical approach to sculpt…
Alvisé Boccanegra: Venice — A floating miracle
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In the third of our Venice series, Mike and I are meeting furniture restorer Alvisé Boccanegra who trained in restoration in the workshops of the C…
Gabriele Gmeiner: Venice — Walking in their shoes
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In this, the second of our Venice series, Mike Axinn and I met Austrian born shoemaker Gabriele Gmeiner who makes high quality made-to-measure shoe…
Piero Dri: Venice — Rowing through time
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Piero Dri is the fourth and youngest remer in Venice, making oars and oarlocks - or in Italian ‘forcolai’. Since he learnt to row aged 4, rowing ha…
Trailer: If you love Venice
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In the Spring of 2022, sound specialist Mike Axinn and I went to Venice during Homo Faber, an event created by the Michelangelo Foundation to celeb…
Marianna Blier: Home
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Marianna Blier was born in Astrakhan, Russia but moved to Vienna in 2007. She now divides her time between her atelier in Vienna, Austria and her m…
Daphné Du Barry: What is beauty?
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Celebrated figurative sculptor Daphné Du Barry speaks seven languages and modelled for Salvador Dali in her 20s. She discusses her bronzes, her lov…
Helaine Blumenfeld OBE: The language of sculpture
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Renowned sculptor Helaine Blumenfeld continually re-invents herself in her search for a vocabulary of form.
Helaine’s work communicates on all level…
Nilda Comas: It was just a dream
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Nilda Comas knew she’d be an artist from a very young age, and now she’ll be the first Hispanic master sculptor to create a statue for the US Natio…
on form: On stone
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on form is an exhibition of sculptures in stone held every other summer at Asthall Manor, Oxfordshire. Discover what goes on during its installatio…
Flavia Robalo: Dreaming
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From a very young age Flavia drew and painted. She was always asking everyone around her for paper and colours because drawing was her language and…
Veronica Fonzo: Growth
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Veronica was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where her mother taught drawing and painting. She learned alongside her mother’s students, discovered…
Filippo dalle Luche: Key to the future
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Filippo is a vivacious 24-year-old student at Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara which was founded in 1769 by Maria Teresa Cybo, princess of Carrar…
Julia Vance: Letters and words
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With abstract calligraphic lines, Julia Vance creates sculptural forms in white Italian Statuario marble. She tells us how she created a modern alt…
Guus Jooss: Serious play
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Guus Jooss lives in Holland but comes to Pietrasanta in Italy for several months a year to work in marble.
Guus used to work as a museum teacher and…
Badriah Hamelink: Absolute power
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Badriah Hamelink comes from a family of Dutch intellectuals. Her mother is a professor, while her father is the poet and writer Jaques Hamelink. He…
Neil Ferber: Carvers or modellers
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Born in Wales, Neil Ferber started his creative life making models and objects in his parents’ garden shed. After art college he made his way to It…
Cynthia Sah: We are all connected
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Cynthia Sah was born in Hong Kong and studied in the USA. She first came to Italy in 1978 to study and came back soon after to learn with the artis…
Anne Shingleton: Animal magic
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After studying zoology, then going to art school in Bournemouth, Anne tells how it was the traditional teaching of Signorina Simi in Florence that …