Susan Falkman: From Italy to Milwaukee

For Susan Falkman, nature is her point of departure while music has become her muse. She spent five years working in marble on the island of Naxos in Greece beginning in 1972 and eight years subsequently in Carrara, Italy (two places that revere well-crafted stone carving); she then established a sculpture studio in Mequon in the late 1980s. The artist uses ancient hand-carving techniques along with power tools to transform natural stone into art. Her sculptures are carved, scored, and smoothed to a highly polished finish. Much of her work defies the rigidity of stone and presents form as if fluid.