New episode with Jacob Cartwright: Embrace
Our latest episode is out now
Born into an artistic family in Australia, Jacob has been living in Italy on and off since he was two-years-old. He began his musical training very young and brings these sensibilities to his art. All the music in this episode was composed by Jacob.
The Embrace series was inspired by a hug Jacob’s wife Jacqueline gave him. He explains that when his wife gave him a hug he saw a certain form. This form became a piece and this piece then developed into a series of work about the embrace. He also feels that his deep links with music somehow influenced the outcome. He says, ‘It’s a beautiful subject matter because an embrace is a paradox: giving and receiving at the same time. It’s like two things at once and everything at once’.
Jacob loves carving wood and working to optimise its fibre and grain, discovering how it might split or break. He describes his love of the textures of wood and explains both the process of burning wood and using the burnt wood with oil to make a patina. Sometimes in making a sculpture he will cover whole sections of wood with nails.
Jacob usually works with the aid of machinery but admits that he hasn’t yet made up his mind about whether to use a robot. When health and safety regulations around dust threatened his studio, Jacob decided to embrace this change and reverted to working marble by hand to avoid machinery altogether. He tells us how this meditative way of working influences his life.
Episode 17 – Jacob Cartwright: Embrace
As always, you can see photos that accompany our episodes over on our website materiallyspeaking.com or on Instagram.
We’ll write again soon to tell you about the next episode which will be the last in this series. In the meantime, we hope the podcast here provides food for thought.
Enjoy listening.
Sarah Monk
producer, Materially Speaking