Via Community News Service, in partnership with Vermont State University Castleton for the Rutland Herald.
Don Ramey is an artist from West Rutland who has long made a living by sculpting masterpieces out of rock. The 65-year-old sculptor spoke recently about his work and life outside the Carving Studio.
Q. What inspired you to become a sculptor?
A. I always liked doing things with my hands and I sort of have a natural gift for copying things and making things that I see. I always drew as a kid, and when I went to art school, I was planning a major in industrial design, but I took a sculpture class, and that really clicked, so I decided to major in sculpture instead.
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Q. What process do you have when it comes to creating these pieces of art?
A. It varies a lot. It depends on what I’m starting with. Some of the sculptures I made downtown — the Ernie Royal and Martin Henry Freeman — were done by other sculptors, and I just enlarged them and pointed them into stone. Actually, one of them I didn’t enlarge, I worked a full-scale model, but for the 54th Regiment, they gave me certain parameters for what they wanted to see. They wanted to see a battle scene, so I just did a lot of research on the 54th Regiment and the guys from Rutland who were in it and came up with that scene with compositional elements of the rifles and how the forms flow through that.
Q. Is there a routine you have when you start your projects?
A. Well, you start with taking off big pieces with a saw and large pitching tools that break a large section of stone and then you just keep going with smaller and smaller pieces, and depending on what the finished form is, you may or may not get into chisel work. But if it’s a detailed thing like a portrait or a figure that has a lot of clothing detail, then yeah, you’re going to finish with chisels.
Q. Do you listen to music when you do your projects?
A. No, I don’t generally listen to music. I’m always wearing hearing protection and I tend to listen to the sound of the work itself because that tells me a little bit about how it’s going. You can tell by the sound when a chisel starts to get dull or how it’s feeling, and you can tell by the sound if something is breaking deeper than you want to break. So, I tend to focus in on the sounds of the tools and the stone itself. I can get into a real flow state at certain points in the process when you’re not making a ton of measurements.
Q. Are there any sculptures that you didn’t enjoy doing?
A. I have done other work for other people in processes that I didn’t particularly enjoy. If I’m working on a sculpture of my own or even if I’m just carving someone else’s sculpture, then I tend to enjoy doing most of that work, even if I hate polishing. Polishing granite is something that I really don’t enjoy, but I do enjoy the results when I get it right. When I’m successful at it, it’s satisfying.
Q. Do you have a daily routine?
A. No, I mean, I don’t have sculpture work going on all the time. Sometimes, I’m doing construction work or other fabrication work. So, it really depends on what’s going on. If I have a sculpture project going on, then, yeah, I tend to work. Nowadays, I do about a three-hour session in the morning, and then I take a long lunch where I can relax my neck and shoulder muscles, and then I get back into another three-hour session in the afternoon. And then I may start by sharpening chisels or sometimes I do the chisel sharpening at the end of the day.
Q. Do you have an all-time favorite movie?
A. Well, you know, I always liked “Brazil.” I like Terry Gilliam’s movies. I would say Terry Gilliam films are in all my top five. But also I like some of Kubrick’s and some of Werner Herzog’s movies.
Q. What motivates you when things get tough?
A. Just the need to make a living is a pretty strong motivator. I do tend to procrastinate sometimes on projects. It’s always hard to start a project. And so deadlines and the need to make money are pretty strong motivators.
Q. Are you working on any projects right now?
A. I’ve got two. I’ve got a headstone in the shop in black granite, and I’ve got another one lined up in white marble.
Q. Do you have a favorite material to carve out of?
A. I used to do a lot of granite work, but lately I’ve done a lot more in marble, and I prefer the marble to the granite. The advantages to the granite are that it’s more durable, it does take a high polish, and it lasts longer, but I don’t know. There are certain things about granite that I like doing, and there are certain things about marble that I like doing. If I’m carving with a hammer and chisel, I prefer to be using marble. But if I’m doing broad geometric forms that need a high polish, I’d rather work with granite.
Q. Have you ever had a project that you have destroyed or given up on?
A. Yeah, I have half a dozen pieces that I have started on my own that are sitting idle that I haven’t touched, you know. I reached a point where the form wasn’t working out. So, I’ll put it aside and maybe come back to it years later and change it into something else. But that’s just part of the creative process, you know. If you come up against an obstacle or what seems like a dead end, then you just put it aside and wait for something else to click into play.