The Making of: Simone's Moai

The stone arrived in the mail, wrapped up in copious layers of bubble wrap, paper and tape. The poor delivery man was flustered and believed it to be an outboard motor or something, so heavy was it. 26.85 kg, to be precise. I was baffled that such a thing could be ordered so easily online! This one comes originally from somewhere in Asia.

The first step to tackling this beast was to saw off the foot so it could properly stand upright. From there, I could get something of a clear picture of what I was working with. I then smoothed out the rough edges and biggest flaws using my handy files and did a good deal more sawing.

Above you can see the array of files I used to accomplish this piece. Soapstone is a soft material (1-2 on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness), which makes chiseling with a hammer a very bad idea. Saws, files and sandpaper all the way. The bag you see in the background is the first day's worth of soapstone dust (aka talc powder) that I managed to collect. One of its uses is as a filler in soap, which is how the stone gets its name.

The client's idea for this stone was to recreate a moai sculpture he and his wife had bought during a trip to Easter Island, which suffered the unfortunate fate of being smashed by careless airport workers and subsequently stolen. He wanted to surprise her with a unique work of art to commemorate their trip. After a number of sketches, we settled on the figure to the left.

To get myself back into the feel of sculpting, I made a few maquettes in clay. It allowed me a feel for the real physical shape of the figure.

I set to work. The process between the stone you see above and the rough figure you see here went undocumented, but I can assure you that a good deal of heartache and elbow grease was involved. Having the rough form, however, meant I could really get down to business on the details.

On the right, you can see the face beginning to form, and symmetry beginning to even out. Working with soft stone means that one can easily slip and file off an important sculptural feature, and I am very thankful that those lips remained when I maneuvered my way into the Moai's nostrils. His neck and body were another challenge, as taking such a large amount of stone away from the midsection took trust that I wouldn't somehow destroy everything. Thankfully, I didn't!

When the sculpting was finally done (including some detailed carving on the figure's back), I sanded the whole figure down with varying grades of wet sandpaper, then rubbed in Marpol and soapstone polish, finally revealing the subtleties of the marbled black and white stone underneath. 

Here he is! Simone's handsome Moai!