This talk will last an hour torso

Marble sculptor MJ Anderson will share her visual arts lecture, “From Nehalem to Carrara - Carving a Life from Marble” at the Hoffman Center for the Arts this Saturday, July 22. Listen to stories of her 40 year annual migration between her home and sculpture studio on the Oregon coast to her studio and life in the historic community of Carrara, Italy. 

Anderson creates sculptures for architectural, liturgical and private commissions as well as personal work for gallery exhibitions. Her work can be viewed locally at Coast Gallery and Coast Cabins in Manzanita, Rowboat Gallery at Salishan Marketplace and Imogen Gallery in Astoria. 

“Her aesthetic eye is inclusive, accepting and compassionate, grounded in a lifetime of extravagant loves and losses, which score the cuts and smooth the curves of every piece she creates,” said Richard Speer, American art critic, curator and author. “And what gloriously allusive cuts and curves, what nubby, gnarly, defiantly individualistic surface topographies animate her artworks! She is a devotee of the anomaly, the irregularity ripping through a chunk of otherwise smooth rock, which other artists might disparage. She honors the evocative imperfection of wabi-sabi, the scars that give a stone its soul.”

The talk begins at 7 pm at the Hoffman Center for the Visual Arts, located at 594 Laneda Avenue in Manzanita. Admission is $15. For more information go to hoffmanarts.org.