Don Dougan - sculptor
                                     www.dondougan.com
Nonno, Nonna
italian carrara bianco unito & bardiglio marbles
6" x 23" x 13"
When my grandfather died in 1983 after his 100th birthday, I had a vision of a mound-shape sculpture in a vertical block of white marble, with a dark square-cut element.  I tried to find a block of marble which was suitable for the piece, but it just never happened.

  While working on top of a mountain in Italy several years later, carving   the white marble base for a red marble form, I realized that this piece (without the red marble) was going to be the piece for my grandfather.

  I was studying Egyptian mythology at the time, and most of the various creation myths of ancient Egypt began with a primal mound of mud from which the creator emerged.  These mythological ideas and the sense of my own beginnings merged as I worked on this piece.


While fitting the water-like gray bardiglio marble, I realized that it embodied the principle of my grandmother in the same way the white mound embodied my grandfather. 

When the translator labeled my title, "Grandfather, Grandmother" into Italian for the exhibition, I felt the sound of the Italian words - Nonno, Nonna - fitted to the forms even better than the English.
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