1999 Aswan International Sculpture Symposium (Aswan, Egypt)
2011 Hualien Intentional Stone Sculpture Festival
2012 BENQ International Sculpture Workshop (Hsinchu, Taiwan)
Introduction
In the beginning, my idea was to shape different forms with materials. First, I worked on granite and set up a dialog that only existed between it and me. I tried to form a contradiction between the heavy weight of granite and a concept of an inner movement that was far from heaviness. While doing my creation, I tried to feel the balance between light and heavy as well as the tempo at work and the materials (such as unpolished material, polished material, or the tempo of using tools.).
Each sculpture is an inner adventure to me because I work on stones without making plans or models in advance. Such process of searching for harmony between contradictions is what appeals to me. Creation like this within the materials or within the simple organization I intend is usually based on an operation that can be hardly observed.
To me, what I bet on is to keep the heaviness of the granite, the feature of steepness, and offer it a life.
That was in 1988 when she fell in love with it when she had the first contact with a huge yellow granite rock. There was a dialog between her and the granite rock. While Catherine Léva was listening to the stories from the rock, she then fetched the tools and went on her journey.
Because of the encounter with the rock, she could feel the marks and the brands shown on the stone which aroused her impulse to free the life and energy from the rock.
Catherine said, “The granite is silent until I damage it by cutting it with a saw; then our dialog begins. It could be the rock itself that inspired me; I might also have no inspirations until I break it. The crack and the fault surface suggest the directions to me and lead my way in creation. I work on joining, embedding and whether the materials and the colors are balanced or not. Stone offers me a vast space for creation where I can make sculptures with great fun.”
“In creation, there is a rule that I follow. If I can turn a stone into a different subject, it can be more than a stone. Basalt is my favorite stone, but I also like granite and serpentinite whose colors change from light green to dark green. They are all hard rocks. Black and white marble also appeals to me.”
Catherine Léva has presented monumental sculptures and the sculptures with smaller and moveable size as well.
She has seeped in the steepness of the rock with care to create a pure and non-figurative stone with serenity, dynamic and power. If we feel them with our eyes and ears, we can hear them talking to us.