Sculpture
Marble Pebbles
Turkey is one of the worlds largest producers of marble and Comlekci village is close to one of the biggest marble quarrying regions in Turkey, an area that extends from Milas to the regional capital of Mugla. There are hundreds of marble quarries in the region producing marble of various qualities and in a wide variety of colors.
So where do my marble pebbles come from? Well for a start we're not talking about the sort of pebbles you find on the seashore, these are monster pebbles probably formed by some giant river hundreds of thousands if not millions of years ago. Rivers flow in valleys and even though the giant rivers no longer exist the valley does and it is here that the pebbles can be found. Of course the exact location of the pebbles I use for my sculptures will remain a secret, all I will say is that it is in the region of Yatagan, a small town between Milas and Mugla, in a valley that now only has a very small river where marble pebbles lie around in abundance and are even used by the local farmers to build the walls around their fields.
The external appearance of the pebbles belies the beauty of their interior, they all look very similar from the outside the result of countless years of grinding, it's only when the first cut is made that a glimpse of the true color of the interior is revealed, the final color is only fully revealed during the final polishing. The pebbles range in size from 200mm to 600mm (8 inches to two feet) and come in every color of marble available in the region from black to white, pink, beige (Travertine), brown and every shade between.
My discovery of the 'Yatagan Pebbles'has led me to research the geology of the area and to find out a bit more about what marble actually is.
...a task in progress, to be continued...