Mara Venn’s studio is quiet enough to hear the building settle. On the longest wall, a sequence of charcoal marks records the height of every sculpture that has left the room.
“The first decision is almost always subtraction,” she says. “Not removing material. Removing the need to explain what the material is doing.”
The work begins when the object stops asking to be admired.
Venn works between drawing and stone, allowing neither to become a plan for the other. A graphite curve may sit on the wall for six years before it finds its weight. A block may remain untouched for a season.
Useful resistance
There is discipline in that delay, but no performance of austerity. The studio is full of jokes, blunt pencils, cold coffee, and the evidence of repeated failure.