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Binkley traveled to Pietrasanta, Italy and rented space at the renowned Studio SEM in order to begin work on four major commissions in the beautiful Italian white marble.
Binkley was able to hand pick the marble for these projects, just as Michelangelo had done for his sculptures years before.
Pietrasanta (Italian for Saint of Stone) has been a mecca for the art of marble carving for centuries. Situated about 40 kms. south of Cararra where the world famous white marble is quarried, Pietrasanta
hosts many bottegas, or stone carving workshops, where classical antiquity sculpture and contemporary sculptor's works are copied from plaster models into marble.
Some of these workshops rent space to visiting sculptors, and the professional, well-equipped Studio SEM is one of them.
Binkley worked along side other international sculptors such as Eppe de Haan, Armon Opp and Helen Blumenfeld under the Tuscan sun.
He began work on two life size female nudes, a public art bench and a barn owl. The partially worked sculptures were shipped to his Vancouver studio for completion and arrived safely in mid-July.
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