Salt of the Earth —
by Martin Cooney

Description:

As with Salty's twin, Girl in the Moon (they were split from the same block of marble) my mandate was to imbue a subtle life force, or energy, into a solid three-dimensional piece of marble… a material not naturally associated with the softer elements of the artistic palette. I have pioneered a technique of breathing life into not only the sculpture’s eyes but certain key features within each carving, causing them to interact with the available light in a way I personally have never seen portrayed in any of the marble sculpture I have witnessed. This ambient effect is created by carving the marble so thinly in parts that light emanating from behind the sculpture serves to back-light certain aspects of the features, injecting into them a sense of mood and subtlety that has the effect of seeming to breathe a sort of life into them.