Carving a Life

My name is Heather Reneé, and I am a stone sculptor and journeyman stonemason, a trade I have practiced since the summer of 1994. Because stone sculptors are few in number, and women stone sculptors even fewer, I have written this brief account of how I came to sculpting stone as a vocation.

I tend to think of my professional life as a stone from which extraneous parts have been gradually but inexorably chiseled away, until what remained was the true artifact.

Beginnings

Art has been my life since I was a young girl. I was awarded an art-club scholarship to the University of Illinois. Although I studied international business, I continued to draw and paint on my own. After two years, I went abroad to attend the Université Paul Valery in Montpelier, France. 

France was a creative transition. I read dozens of books, absorbed the rich culture of Languedoc-Rousillon, and grew as an artist. I served my first apprenticeship there, to a pâtissier. 

At this point I determined that my life's work would be crafted with my hands. I returned home with thoughts of opening a salon-de-thé. I catered parties and supplied four-star restaurants with the cakes and pastries I made at home. But, as it turned out, the life of a restaurateur would not be my calling.

The First Stone

At this time I encountered my first mason. This 67-year-old man built a serpentine brick wall at my parents’ home. I knew as I watched him work that this was something I wanted to learn. He hired me soon afterwards.

A couple of years later, I moved from bricks into stone. Fitting stone was the next level of learning for me. It took creativity to work out how the stones fit together best. And it kept me interested for quite some time.

Still, I'd never yet carved stone. Then at one job I was given a large piece of limestone. I towed that rock around in the back of my truck for two years before I had the courage to approach it. Three months after I finally put chisel to stone, I received my first stone carving commission. I called it the Tapestry Mantelpiece, and it sits in a house in Edison Park in West Orange, New Jersey.

Stone Reveals Itself to the Chisel

Thus began my career as a stone sculptor. Working with the natural beauty of the stone to create a work of art is exhilarating. I lose myself in the process of revealing the work of art within the stone. Because a block of stone seems cold and inert at the outset, the finished sculpture is all the more vital. Carved stone shimmers with movement. 

Each piece is a unique and lasting legacy created by joining the client's vision and my art. I am glad to be able to work with people who enjoy developing a one-of-a-kind expression of their own creative energy.

HR