Melanie Zibit

“The two forms of my sculpture, Echo, reflect back and forth to each other through shape and movement, with the smaller form amplified by the larger, making a visual metaphor of an echo. Creating a two part sculpture requires working on both pieces at the same time so that they visually relate.

Echo, in Greek mythology, was a mountain nymph who offended the goddess Hera by keeping her in conversation thus preventing Hera from spying on her husband, Zeus, with a lover. To punish Echo, Hera deprived her of speech, except for the ability to repeat the last words of another. Thus is an “echo.”

I carved Echo in one of the historic marble workshops in Carrara Italy, the same workshops where Michelangelo and his workmen carved during the Renaissance. The workshop walls were lined with shelves filled with sculptures from generations ago as well as those of modern sculptors, enhancing the environment and giving me the sense I was working around the ghosts of sculptors through the ages.”