Susan Falkman’s sculptures have been recognized throughout the world and you can find her work throughout southeast Wisconsin. She told WTMJ’s Libby Collins about living and studying in Greece and Italy, creating her award-winning pieces, and why she has made Milwaukee her home on this edition of WTMJ Conversations!
A partial transcript is provided below, courtesy of eCourt Reporters.
LIBBY COLLINS: I want to talk about that 40-foot limestone relief carving at the Wilson Center in Brookfield. A 40-foot-tall wall, is it all in one piece of stone when it arrives?
SUSAN FALKMAN: No. When I came to the site, there was nothing on the site except the tower of the fireplace, which was cement block. I had my design, which they had okayed, I had the stone cut and delivered. It was 8 inches deep, each piece was 2 feet. That was all laid by masons.
So, when I came to the site to carve, I’m looking up at that 40-foot, and I cried. So there I am, I had made models. So, I’m just gonna do square foot by square foot, and that’s what I did all the way up.
You know, I started out, it was freezing cold, and by the time I got to the top, it was hot up on aluminum scaffolding, standing there in the hot sun.
LIBBY COLLINS: Do you ever make a mistake when you’re carving?
SUSAN FALKMAN: Oh, yes. But see that’s —
LIBBY COLLINS: How do you fix that?
SUSAN FALKMAN: — the beauty. Well, let’s say I’ve done this part, you fix it by changing the line of the music. You just change the line. It’s all these curves, okay. So, if I make something here, well, then I’m gonna have to change that whole curve.
LIBBY COLLINS: You keep referring to it as “music,” is that how you approach it?
SUSAN FALKMAN: Yeah, and dance. It’s — it’s, for me, personified music and dance. Sometimes I think, what if you could take the curves of the pieces — like one of the pieces has many, many parts, take each curve and play that as a note going up and down the scale. And then this other part would be the base section, they would play that note. You know, what it would be like as a piece of music. I don’t carve it that way, but there’s some way that that comes through.
