Melanie Zibit
Sculptor
My career as a professional sculptor was launched when my college sculpture professor told me, "You must go to Italy if you are going to create sculpture." I graduated from Brandeis University, magna cum laude, with honors in sculpture and the most promising student in sculpture. Then I took myself to Carrara Italy to learn to carve from the masters. I spent three months there and when I ran out of money I returned home. I managed to have my first one-person show that spring and sold just one piece. During my twenties I alternated between living in New York City to exhibit my work and living in rural Maine. After being a "poor starving" artist for seven years, I went back to school to get an M Ed in 1977 with the hope of teaching art. When that did not materialize I went and earned an MBA from the Harvard Business School and later became involved in the startup of the Internet in New England. Over the years I have built a 2nd career as an educational researcher at Boston College.
Madonna Confined
Starting with my earliest sculptures in college, I wanted to capture the elegance, beauty and permanence inherent in stone. My first piece took me 6 months to carve and was just a small piece of limestone. I wanted it to be perfect and was concerned that any wrong stroke with the chisel would ruin the piece. But when I got to Italy and found the workman using pneumatic hammers, much of my apprehension disappeared as the tools gave me much more control. I did my first large sculpture in red Verona marble which took 3 months. I did all the work myself, roughing out the marble, carving the forms, sanding and grinding the surface down by hand to make it smooth, and then rubbing it vigorously with aluminum oxide to create the luster.
The painter, Mitchell Siporin captured the spirit of my work with the following words he wrote for my first exhibition brochure, "the liquid, flowing forms?have been endowed with a dignified energy, dynamically serene, self-contained and communicative."
Tree of Knowledge
Marble and Bronze sculptures
Contact:
Melanie Zibit
111 Burlington Street
Lexington, MA 02420 USA
e-mail: zibit@bc.edu
My website is
http://www.mzibit.com
