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MARTIN PURYEAR: I’m real [br]interested in vernacular cultures

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where people lived a little [br]closer to the source of materials

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and the making of objects for use.

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I’m real interested in trades, [br]in ways that people make things

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which are not necessarily artistic.

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I mean, they’re artistic in the sense [br]that they can have formal beauty,

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but they’re not, they’re not [br]done with an artistic motive.

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They’re done often with a utilitarian motive.

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As a woodworker I use tools all the time.

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And there’s a certain art history to the [br]evolution of woodworking tools in itself.

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These are the carving tools…

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I mean, you look at the forms that [br]various utilitarian things have taken

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throughout history and there’s a whole [br]sort of shifting sense of beauty.

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It is a ladder. It's made like a ladder.

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It's made like country ladders you see in places,

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whether they would, people [br]would cut a tree trunk in half

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and put rungs between the two halves.

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And Ladder at Fort that’s a, that's a ladder.

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The title came after the work was finished.

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I didn't set up to, set out to make [br]a work about Booker T. Washington.

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The work was really about using [br]the sapling, using the tree.

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And making a work that had a kind of [br]artificial perspective, a forced perspective,

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that made it appear to recede into [br]space faster than it, in fact, does.

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That really was what the work was about for me,

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is this kind of artificial perspective.

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It's an idea that requires [br]a certain actual length;

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it's a piece that couldn't have been done small.

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As it was, it was thirty-six feet long.

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And the idea of Booker T. Washington, [br]the resonance with his life,

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and his struggle, and the whole notion [br]that his idea of progress for the race,

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was a long slow progression of, as he said,

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putting your buckets down where you [br]are, and working with what you've got.

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And so, it really is a question [br]of like, the view from where you,

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where you start, and the end, the goal.

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And, I really, it's, this is something I [br]don't really want to elaborate on too much

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because I think, I think it's, it's in the work.

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I came from a generation where the [br]work was itself the information.

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So, there remains this belief that [br]the work itself can have an identity

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that can hopefully speak [br]whether it's through beauty,

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or through ugliness or whatever [br]quality you put into the work,

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that is what the work can be about.

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The work doesn't have to be [br]a transparent vehicle for you

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to say things about life today or what you,

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what you see people doing to [br]each other or things like that.

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I'm making a case for my own vision.

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It can actually move in a direction that [br]has got some representational tendencies.

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Or some, at least some elusive tendencies.

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Or some kind of tendencies [br]that are, very suggestive.

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—OLIVER: Has it been eight years…

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ave you been back since…

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—PURYEAR: I haven’t been back.

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This is my first visit since it was finished.

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I wanted to do something which was like a folly,

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like an architectural folly, [br]which I think it ended up being.

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It was just an attempt to make a work that had,

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literally had two sides that there’s [br]a grotto-like half of this experience,

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that you can look into, you can peer into,

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but never really enter. It’s [br]mysterious, hopefully mysterious.

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—OLIVER: You have to get down real low and

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there has to be a lot of ambient light…

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And then there’s the other side of it [br]that’s very much a projection into space,

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a kind of more aggressive, [br]if you will, masculine side.

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And the two are divided by a wall.

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And I was very interested in working with stone.

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The idea of real [br]permanence was important to me.

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And the idea of making shapes out [br]of that material using stone shapes

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in space that aren’t about straight [br]walls and ninety degree corners.

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OLIVER: I know the stonemasons loved the idea.

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When they were here working they [br]said this was their favorite part.

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When they got here and they got to the window,

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to do things other than a traditional stone wall…

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—OLIVER: So there’s that false [br]arch that’s over here and…

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—Puryear: Do you have those maquettes?

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—Oliver: Oh yeah, all was saved…

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PURYEAR: Steven always gets extremely involved in these projects as a troubleshooter.

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And, it almost seems that the [br]more complicated the project,

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the more fascinating it becomes for Steven [br]and it doesn’t seem to at all put him off,

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and it just sort of makes him [br]dig deeper and deeper into it,

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and just use all of his contractor’s instincts.

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Most of the visitors like to take the pictures…

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In the sense they get this...

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Stone doesn’t want to go out over space.

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And this piece cantilevers out to about five feet.

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And so it took some serious engineering [br]to allow that to happen safely.

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And, through Steven’s work he knew [br]of a very very good stone worker–

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Eugene Domenically.

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And he was a crucial part of this whole process.

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—Puryear: I think he did the whole dome himself…

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It was a funny thing about how [br]we could get this shape right.

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He wanted to look at the model and [br]just eyeball it, remember that?

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And I said, “Eugene I think we [br]should have some kind of a, a gauge,”

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and I suggested that and he – “No, [br]we don’t need that! I can copy it.”

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I mean, there’s a lot of know-how out there [br]that’s really nice to collaborate with, and use.

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That’s what I have learned is how to give up

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some of the control that I felt I had [br]to have over every single aspect of it,

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because there’s sometimes the other people’s input can actually open up your thinking,

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to possibilities that you weren’t even aware of.

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I think of it as a monolith, although [br]it is made from eighteen stones.

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But it’s really carved in a way so that [br]it becomes a contoured single object.

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It certainly suggests a head, a colossal head.

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And, I’ve done various pieces in [br]the past that have been based on

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that finished piece same [br]idea of a an enormous head.

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And, I’ve been wanting to do [br]something in stone, in this,

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using this kind of form for a long time.

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I have spent most of my working life ah,

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making work that may seem to be carved

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but which it in fact is constructed, [br]made from parts and put together.

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And although this was made [br]from eighteen blocks assembled,

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essentially the process of [br]shaping the blocks was one of

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carving from solid material. [br]And I’ve never carved stone.

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I haven’t carved stone since [br]I left, left college really.

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And when I got notified that there was an interest

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in having a commission of mine in Japan,

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the choice of material was in some ways [br]suggested by the fact that it was Japan,

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because they have such a tradition [br]of working with stone there.

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One of the major challenges which [br]is the, the sheer scale of it,

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the sheer size of working with blocks [br]that large, finding blocks that large.

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They have to be located in [br]a very remote part of China

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and brought to Xiamen on the [br]coast where they were worked,

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a city that has a very, very large stone industry

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And a piece of this scale the [br]carving requires diamond tools

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and water to do it efficiently.

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So I had to find a way to really [br]transmit my ideas to artisans,

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which required making the model at one-tenth scale

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The model could be disassembled

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and the tracings made of each block

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and those tracings could be enlarged ten times

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and that’s the basis that they [br]used for making the final piece.

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In China it was a little complicated [br]because I had to translate in two stages.

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— Puryear: You see how here it [br]goes in. Together it may not be…

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I had a person with me who [br]spoke Japanese and English.

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—It will be correct here and [br]be correct here but maybe this…

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And the person in the stone [br]yard spoke fluent Japanese,

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and he was Chinese.

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So, it had to go from my person [br]from Japan into Chinese.[br]

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The piece was, in fact, carved much [br]more than I had anticipated in China.

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The actual contour of the outside, [br]was thought to be done in Japan.

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It turns out that that was, that [br]work was largely done in China.

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That’s why I had to go to China, [br]to, to see the work in progress.

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—Puryear: This can’t be a straight line..

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The work was delivered to the site in Japan.

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I was introduced to, this man, Mr. Okasaki, [br]who had worked with sculptors a lot.

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Done a lot of carving, for, for [br]various sculptors, Japanese sculptors.

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And very very proud person, [br]in terms of his workmanship

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and the respect that he had for [br]his work and just his abilities.

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And, once the pieces were [br]assembled, the shaping continued.

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There was a week’s worth of carving on site.

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Mr. Okasaki and his son did most of the [br]carving with hand chisels, and diamond saws.

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But the shaping was mostly done with hand chisels,

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because of the surface I wanted.

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I didn’t want a surface that was [br]in any way ground or polished.

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It had to have, it had to [br]have marks of the chisel.

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It doesn’t look natural.

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It’s a very man-made surface.

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It has, it has pockmarks from the, [br]from the blows of these sharp chisel,

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but the contours are quite [br]smooth and quite continuous.

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But, run your hand over it, and it feels like [br]you’re running it over a very rough rock.

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I think I do deal in forms, that [br]people often see something organic

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and derive from nature and I’m [br]certainly interested in nature—

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I’m real fascinated by natural [br]forms and natural processes.

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But I’m probably more [br]interested in the way culture,

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cultural forms evolve, the making process [br]itself, and the history of making process—

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it’s always been a big generator of ideas.