stone carving
Amberley Long
Please tell us a bit about yourself.
Hi, I’m Amberley Long. Born on the outskirts of London and living in Dorset. I am an artist with my main practice being in stone carving. I also make clothes, functional household items and play with all materials that I can. I moved to Cornwall to study Fine Art at Falmouth University in 2017, and then co-founded a collective while finishing University, during covid, known as Quarry House Collective. We renovated a studio on a working granite quarry, moved in, made work, and held open studios too. Since then, I have assisted artists to help with their projects and to gain knowledge in the field. I have recently got back from being in Italy for a few months, assisting an artist who works in Marble and Granite.
What was your early motivation to express your creativity through sculpting?
have always been creative and wanted to fulfil a need to build and construct things. From when I was younger building sandcastles, finding fossils, and constantly bringing back pebbles and rocks. Honestly, when I moved house this year I had two suitcases full of stones, rocks, and fossils found throughout my life. I think I need a trip to the beach to let some go.
My main motivation to express myself through sculpturing is probably the textures and layers that I see, as well as involving shapes of powerful stories from those I've met along the way. Mainly just expressing the use of my hands with the connection of the mind. I am so intrigued by bodily senses and how the environment feels around your body, and especially upon touching something, it changes your thoughts to the texture of this ‘thing’ that you are looking at. I want to express these layers and depth through my work, with shadows, texture, and detail.
How has your academic background in Fine Art shaped your approach to creating sculptures?
I think that the last year of my degree is what changed it all. Even though I studied throughout school, and it always being the subject I worked the hardest at, my third year was when I really found how I got my thoughts and needs in my head into carving, sculpting, painting, moving, and breathing.
I studied half of a Fashion Design degree at Bournemouth University first, and then I moved to Fine Art at Falmouth University as I realised that was the wrong course for me. I constructed clothing that was very sculptural and obscure and realised that I wanted to make these things not necessarily to put them on a body, but to have them in an environment.
I do remember my first day of the degree in fine art, I joined in the second year from transferring courses, and my tutor at the time, who is now a mentor post-university and friend, noticed my itch to get my art needs out. I had no idea where to start. He suggested going to the shop and buying a small bag of plaster or cement. From that, I used my knowledge in my fashion degree of stitching, materials, weights, and pattern cutting to create moulds that the plaster or cement would fall into. Gravity was then and still is a huge part of my work.
Can you take us through your process?
The most important part of my process is the time and thoughts before. I value this time extremely. As I know that when I start carving or painting, I won’t stop. My brain doesn’t quite like it when I take breaks away from work so I don’t, just in case the inspiration and rhythm stops. A list of an artist's projects will always be endless, but the question is when to start them and how they will work. I play, draw and experiment with ideas until it makes sense in my head.
Depending on the material, I always find a way to accentuate its natural forms. For example, working with granite or limestone, I much prefer to work with offcuts and shapes that are obscure in a way. To keep the personality of the stone. If it’s a mould I’m making, I tend to be ‘deliberately and accidentally messy’ when making it. All materials have their own mind as well as your own, I like to think.
Do you have a favourite material to work with?
This is a very hard question to answer – it is completely dependent on the concept and the mood, as well as trying to make the most of all the found material. I mainly draw with charcoal, and then use clay to form the sculptures I have listed in my head, and also to just play and get my hands working. I love working with stone, whether that’s carving it or simply just making an installation out of what I’ve got. Cornish Granite is most definitely my favourite. It portrays the ruggedness of Cornwall and the unexpectedness of the landscape. I also love working with cement and plaster, where I can play with the gravity and moulds, and working in the opposite way to carving completely. However, I always have in the back of my head the environmental effects it has, so I try to reduce my use of materials that cannot be recycled in some way.
We know that you co-founded two art collectives. Can you tell us more about Quarry House Collective and Gass Collective, and share more about your experience of building mutually supportive relationships within these two communities?
Quarry House Collective was formed through an exhibition "Sculptili, Materiales, Conceptu" held in Penryn, Cornwall at the Fish Factory in 2020. Our work somehow communicated with each other; and through natural conversations, planning, and help from Cultivator Cornwall, we formed a collective. We renovated an art studio/hub on a working Granite Quarry just outside of Falmouth - where we create work, have open studios and residencies; and in the future hope to hold workshops and collaborations (etc). Gass Collective is a total of 13 artists that were formed through Cultivator Cornwall on our graduate start-up award grant. After over a year of working with each other, having meetings and artistic advice conversations around Cornwall in the rain and sun about our practices, we held exhibitions and events as a collective.
How do you feel about working with your hands? Can you tell us more about the impact that it has on your happiness and well-being?
It is magical. I feel very close to the connection between your brain and your hands and how my head tells what muscles to do what. It is the most natural source that we have as humans, the use of our hands, and feel like we take every sense for granted sometimes. Whatever form of craft or practise those use with their hands, helps your well-being. Just being quiet and shaping something is just a very special skill as it is.
What and who inspires you?
Walking and finding stillness in the simplicity of everyday life is definitely where my inspiration grows. I find it very difficult to think most of the time, so I make the most of every second of this thought process before working in this moment of stillness. I work a lot with light and dark, and the shadows in between the shapes and textures. Finding a way to portray the gap in environmental spaces and the feeling of this void. I also find that reading into history, archeology, cultures and science shapes an idea of forms and a story in my head.
I very much enjoy visiting museums and galleries, especially the High Renaissance exhibitions. Artists such as Gonzalo Fonseca, Michelangelo and Constantin Brancusi are where my love for carving began and the shapes of stone forms.
How can we become better at reclaiming traditions, skills, and crafts?
I believe that traditional crafts will always be around and there will always be someone practising these skills. However, with technology advancing, these traditions are slowly dissolving, which is why I find that it is so important to use our hands more and make more household equipment and tools from recycled materials. I have recently purchased a book published in the 1940s about country crafts and how we can make tools and everyday apparatus ourselves in very simple ways. You’d be surprised how many things you can make from collecting things you find on a walk in the woods or on a beach.
What upcoming projects make you excited right now?
I have a few projects that I´ve been itching to work on for the past year after having some time out of carving and painting and focusing on writing and well-being. During the last year of my degree, I desperately wanted to work with the RNIB and the visually impaired centers local to Cornwall, however, the pandemic hit, and I didn't have this chance. I wanted to hold a workshop for visually impaired people to touch and find a perception with my work and other objects, testing the senses and how the difference between touch and sight affect each other. This is still a plan to take place in the future.
I have just spent a few months in Italy, assisting an artist on his projects, which has been beyond amazing. I was mainly working with stone for my time there, carving a local stone of Tuscany as well as Marble from Carrara. I am hoping to travel around England and abroad to collaborate and connect with artists to learn new skills, teach my craft and a dream would be to create murals and pieces of work that send a message to whoever views it, in whatever way they would want to portray it.
