Venus
7' x 20" x 20"
Italian calacatta marble on NM travertine 2012
The creative process often begins with spontaneous renderings in clay, which are created as “sketches” for a new sculpture that, in final form, can weigh more than 1,000 pounds.
Then, tools in hand, she begins to execute that shape in the perfect material. “Sometimes, I just see a block [of stone] that’s beautiful,” she says, as was the case with her 2012 “Venus”. Years before starting the piece, she spotted a marble with “just the right veining” in an Italian quarry. “On a later trip, I put my name on it, and then, when I could finally afford it, I came back and bought it”- with three different pieces in mind. “I know in my mind when I’m roughing it out how I want it to look when it’s done,” McArdle says. “I use diamond saws to cut away, hammers to break it, and chisels to shape it, leaving evidence of the process and the illusion of movement and tunics that the figure is wearing.”
~ excerpt from Annapolis Lifestyle