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The Beacon of The STone InduSTry
Julie Warren Conn Explores the Power of Expression in Stone
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decemBer 2022 Vol. 28-12
All Creatures
“In 1994, I was commissioned by the Memphis Cancer Center in Memphis, Tennessee to create a sculpture for their lobby. I was given freedom to just do the work as I wished—no questions asked (always the way to get the best work from an artist!). Done over a
Growing up in Knoxville, Tennessee in the 1950s, Julie Warren Conn loved working with her hands.
She imagined becoming a fashion designer while making clothes for her paper dolls, or being an airline stewardess when gazing at the sky through the treetops. From time to time, Julie also imagined natural shapes of all types, and at the time, unbeknownst to her, it was these images that would help shape and eventually lead her to her passion and lifetime career as a sculptor.
Imagination Will Take You Everywhere
Now imagine, if you will: Julie, now a young woman, having the good fortune to attend the University of Tennessee to pur- sue her chosen craft, and leaving with a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts in Sculpture in 1965. Her life was falling into place as she spent the first ten years of her career welding sheets of steel into art objects. Life was good; however, change was in the air. Julie was primed and ready for what would
by Peter Marcucci
Photos Courtesy Julie Warren Conn and by Larry Hood
be her next phase and the final key to her success, but not without a lot of work, due diligence and luck, she recalled. “I was very tired of the welding, and I finished a piece of stone that I started in college. Once I did that, I went to a local mar- ble company, The Marble Shop. Claude Ledgerwood owned the company and per- mitted me come in, and the men in the mill taught me how to use the electric and pneu- matic tools to work the stone.”
The Transformation of Love
By 1975, Julie’s metal work was side- lined, and a clear path leading to natural stone was in her destiny, she explained. “The beauty of the stone was so outstand- ing and the process of carving stone was so opposite of what I had been doing, that one piece led to the next, and I never returned to welding. I found my interest, I found my
.375 period of months, the four pieces of marble were carved by me with- out assistance. Various high-relief carvings of animals surround the lower portion. The top three pan- els are doweled and can be turned in various angles. All pieces are highly polished revealing the
beauty of the Italian Serpeggiante marble. The mass of the pieces is mounted on a very heavy cast bronze base. Sadly, The Cancer Center closed a few years ago but the sculpture became the focal point in the doctor’s home who had originally commissioned the work. It was a sheer labor of love to create this piece. I feel it is the closest I have come to creating a “masterpiece.”
passion, and instead of being an additive process, which I was doing in steel, I was reducing the stone and trying to find the form and the shape.”
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Cochise Marble – A Surprise Ain the Arizona Desert
mong sweeps of tan, red, and grey rocks, sits a surprise: A pocket of gleaming white marble.
Even the geologic map makes barely a passing mention of it – but the stone is a spectacular find that rewards those who look deeper.
The Legacy of Minerals
Cochise Marble quarry is located near Bowie, Arizona, in the Chiricahua Mountain range. The region is the ancestral lands of Apache tribes, and was acquired by the United States from Mexico in 1848. American military expeditions, surveyors,
by Karin Kirk
Photos Courtesy Cochise Marble; Map and Graphic by Karin Kirk
and prospectors set out to explore the ter- ritory, striking gold in the Chiricahua Mountains in 1860.
Decades of struggle ensued, writing more chapters in the ages-long battle between resource extraction and indigenous peo- ple that has been repeated throughout his- tory. Though it’s a difficult part of our American story, the Cochise Marble com- pany tries to honor the origins of the land and the people who lived here before us.
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