This commentary is by Nick Santoro, a resident of Rutland and a reply to a Sept. 8 Rutland Herald commentary by Louis Scotellaro, and by extension Santoro’s vision for Rutland.
Your pointed pen is like a point chisel’s initial entry into the darkened black surface of a gigantic dormant block of white Vermont marble hibernating way back behind the Carving Studio in West Rutland. Likely, it’s been gathering darkness there since the 1950s or ’60s and has awakened with the energetic swing of your pen. Bravissimo, Senore Scotellaro.
In the late 1960s and early ’70s, UVM sculptor-professor Paul Aschenbach inspired symposiums of monumental stone carving and great sculptors from around the world took some of those big blackened white blocks and carved them, and now those gigantic stone sculptures are displayed at parking areas on Interstates 89 and 91. At the end of this video is a short one of the sculptor Karl Prantl. His tactile joy is such a poignant example of what stone means to a loving shaper of it.
In the late 1980s, B Amore laid the foundation for the Carving Studio with marble manufacturer Stanley Gawet, who purchased the West Rutland quarry property from the Vermont Marble Co. in the 1970s. For 35 years, through their ongoing commitment to revitalize and promote stone carving, B Amore and Carol Driscoll have created a world-class carving sanctuary for aspiring and mature artists. Sculptors come to express their dynamic elemental consciousness by chiseling marble and other stones into unique, metaphoric and representational 21st-century sculptures.
In 1976, when I first struck a piece of Indiana limestone, I smelled the aroma of the 300-million-year-old tiny fossils and my love affair with shaping stone was born. I came to Rutland because the quarries were here. The young Carving Studio was birthing. I carved organic, tactile shapes. Brancusi’s approach to shaping stone influenced me most.
Regardless of my proclivities or yours, Senore Scotellaro, I’ve always admired the skill, knowledge and experience that goes into a figurative human rendering in stone. It’s really quite amazing how much anatomical, perceptual and focused skill it takes to carve a human likeness, even if in relief. When I’m at the Rutland library, I look closely at the hours and hours of studied tapping and filing that created the bust there. The Sculpture Trail certainly exhibits world-class stone sculptors doing highly skilled professional work. Personally, Don Ramey’s carving of Martin Freeman is my favorite because of the way the gray stone is delineated with the darkened gray marble, which seems to me to enhance his sensitized vulnerability as an educated black man in the 19th century.
So, Senore Scotellaro, to answer your question, “What can we do to attract more young people to downtown?” — Bring on the artists and farmers! The Carving Studio and the Farmers Market have laid the groundwork for attracting talented young people to this area. Rutland is beautifully situated, with Amtrak operating up through Burlington now. People with digital jobs in hand and real-time climate change happening are coming north.
It’s time to fill vacant downtown retail stores and nearby industrial spaces with creative, vibrant, young people who are the future and want to be here. Let’s create something like a downtown subsidized development corporation for artists, artisans, craftspeople and farmers. Let’s find a permanent home for the Farmers Market; it has been the most vibrant, relaxed, informal socializing and gathering place in Rutland for years because it really provides the best food and community in town.
The generative spirit of the Carving Studio, Steve Costello’s carver vision, Mark Foley’s love for Rutland, and Bill Ramage’s Rutland perspective with his art experience have been the crucial ingredients of Rutland’s natural future artist downtown formula. Let’s add Paul Ashenbach’s early visionary appreciation of contemporary carvings of massive stones by placing them around the county. Their gigantism will bring people to downtown Rutland for the Sculpture Trail and artists’ shops and restaurants.
Let’s make monumental sculptures appear at the north, south west and east edges of Rutland. Time to see them along the West Street lawn across the tracks down from the Farmers Market. All along Route 7 and Route 4 in Rutland County, like the amusing giant metal sculptures in front of Mac’s Steel. Time for big carved marble blocks on Route 4 between here and the New York state line.
For 30-some years I’ve imagined one of those 9 feet by 7 feet by 3-inch West Rutland marble slabs standing horizontal in the field to the right of the west entrance to Route 4. In my mind, it used to say, “West Rutland, Vermont.” Now it says West Rutland, Vermont, Home of the Carving Studio and the 2022 Triple Crown Golden Horde Girls Champions, or vice-versa.
Rutland is Marble City. Let’s get it out there and capitalize on this historical gift in its many forms at our fingertips. Let’s promote marble, its many kinds of sculptors and artisans; let’s promote agriculture, organic food, organic farmers and organic food production.
In 2018, two outstanding Vermont monumental granite stone carvers — Jerry Williams designed, and Chris Miller carved — produced the goddess of agriculture, Ceres, that now sits atop the Capitol building in Montpelier. Rutland County has two quintessential resources, the marble and agriculture. Like the Carving Studio’s long presence, people like Greg Cox, Paul Horton and Charlie Brown at the Farmers Market have been committed to organic farming for nearly a half century while encouraging young farm hands. There is a developed network of organic farmers whose tried and true success in Depot Park and on West Street deserve as much support as possible.
For those of you who haven’t been out to the Carving Studio, take a drive and stroll along the quarries, especially now with SculptFest22 work on display. Be amazed at how and what creative artists do with stone these days. Likewise, stroll Depot Park on a Saturday and meet local farmers and craftspeople. In my opinion, artists and the kinds of people selling at the Farmers Market need to be occupying empty downtown properties.
The vivacity and vital energy of creative artistic people and earth-tending people need to be “capitalized” upon. These are the people who are imaginative, innovative and flexible; we need them downtown for their grounded, creative and commercial presence. Most importantly, we need these inspirational people for their transformative energy to revive the fun and vitality that The Back Home Cafe provided when Rutland was still a hopping place.
The gifted carvers who create The Sculpture Trail with their truly great figurative depictions hopefully will continue to be sponsored to carve figurative sculptures. Their specialized kind of work and its presence downtown perfectly reflects Rutland’s history. Our human personages deserve to be preserved and representational carving persevered for the sake of our humanity and our remarkable consciousness.
When the artists and farmers invigorate downtown and the Rutland Hotel is finally built, people will be coming from the four directions to celebrate the wonderfulness of Vermont in downtown Rutland. Bring on the artists and farmers, our native sons and daughters. Then, there will be no shortage of urban sculptural creations.
Senore Scotellaro’s comments about urban sculpture and its relevance to any downtown make sense to me. This is also a New England community, still a wonderful place to raise a family, and maybe explains the inclination for traditional figurative sculptures.
So, Senore Scottellaro, maybe this carving pen of mine has chiseled the dark block a bit more and the sparkling white crystals way in the way will give area residents reason to contemplate supporting artists, artisans, craftspeople, farmers and food entrepreneurs conducting business in empty downtown locations so that their creative alchemy can transform the waiting block into a shape fit for the future.
Edited for length.
