Tour of Čestmír Suška's Atelier

Today, 12/1, we had another field trip for my English class. We took the metro, took a transfer to another metro, a bus, and then finally trudged through the snow and blistering cold (it's about 15 degrees Fahrenheit in Prague) to our destination. We were visiting Čestmír Suška, one of the foremost Czech sculptors in the country in his atelier just outside Prague.

He took us on a tour of the place (a warehouse like area... that did not have heat) and described a lot of his pieces. His sculptures range from glass, wood and metal, but one thing they have in common is their gigantic weight and size. Suska carves intricate patterns, which he says he gets from curtains and lace table-cloths, into industrial junk, such as gas and beer canisters. The end result is that his massive, weighty sculptures seem skeletal and frail.

 Some of his pieces in his studio

And some more

A quote from his truly, "At first I felt that metal was something that was man-made, which is partly true, but all materials comes from nature, only in different ways. And I have to say that I work with metal in the same way that I work with wood, only it is easier, because I just go to some scrap yard, and it is so easy to find beautiful shapes, they are waiting there to be destroyed and I revive them. I bring them to my studio and I change them into what I hope is a beautiful sculpture. It's like in a fairy-tale, when a frog is changed into a prince."

http://www.suska.cz/e_index.htm