“I think direct contact with the material should be important to every sculptor because I think once you lose that it becomes a second-hand process. It’s one of the reasons the casting process isn’t so interesting to me just because the final product, the final piece has not been touched by the artist. There’s no relationship with the mind that conceived the piece or designed it. I think something is lost when that happens. And it becomes something else.”Born in Cedar Falls Iowa and raised in New York City Mark Mennin graduated with a degree in History from Princeton University, where he also taught ceramics under Toshiko Takaezu. He began to carve stone in Italy in 1984, and worked there for three years, executing commissions and preparing for solo shows in New York. From 1989-1993, he worked in Paris, The scale of his sculpture has evolved to giant landscape and architectural works, often involving hundreds of tons of granite, prompting a move from New York to a large indoor-outdoor atelier in Bethlehem, Connecticut. where he lives with his wife, writer Marcia DeSanctis and two children.· www.markmennin.com · www.creativeprocess.infoPhoto by Charles Lindsay