High on marble dust on High Street
Rodin-esque  couple create exquisite sculptures

By MARIE FOWLER

An artistic dialogue has been going on for 27 years between the two talented sculptors in a studio at 47 High St. in Germantown and there is not always agreement.

Like legendary French sculptor Auguste Rodin, Gianni Benvenuti is older, male and opinionated. And like Rodin's muse and fellow sculptor Camille Claudel, Elfie Harris is younger, female and outspoken. And both Benvenuti and Harris are fiercely passionate about the other's art, just as Rodin and Claudel were.

It makes for a most creative, if tempestuous, environment! Harris and Benvenuti work in a cavernous, light-filled space that she notes was once the oldest American Legion Post in the country, just across the street from Germantown High School. Stone has now taken center stage in what was once the building's theater.

The sculptors work in marble -- from Vermont, the Alps, Belgium, Africa and of course, from Carrara, Italy, where Michelangelo quarried his stones. Amazingly, even stones from the Americas must be purchased in Italy, as Benvenuti explains, indicating the market is there because "the Italians work marble." Thus, added to the already steep cost of the stone itself is the shipping. Then, there is the matter of the costly tools.

A sculptor lives as much by his hand as by his creative impulse. Glasses to protect the eyes from flying chips of stone and masks to prevent breathing in too much marble dust are necessities. Harris insists on earplugs to mute the horrific roar of the air hammer. And an arthritis doctor clued them in about bicyclists' gel gloves, which the two now consider indispensable because the gloves absorb so much of the jarring vibration from hammering.

Both work in an abstract style. "People tend to have trouble with abstract art," Harris concedes. "But when they lie down and look up at the clouds, the clouds remind them of something and that makes them feel good. That's what abstract art is about." Harris remains fascinated by what she terms "unconscious associations that cause people to see things that clearly are not there."

Abstract, yes, but viewers will certainly agree both of these sculptors create works which are beautiful to behold, with sensuous surfaces that beg to be touched.

Benvenuti is especially partial to Belgian black marble, combining it with stainless steel to achieve striking juxtapositions of curved planes and sharp points. "Now we are living in very dangerous, very nasty times. I passed through World War II. In the middle of the German occupation, I was living in Milan, so I have something to express. I do not make sculpture or painting for sale, but to express what I feel."

Working in colaticcio, an aggregate stone that is very rare, he has carved his massive Puerta del sol (Door to the sun), a composition that evokes the mystery of antiquity. "I love the color, the consistency of this stone," he declares.

Benvenuti begins with a maquette, or small-scale model, of each work. As Harris points out, a modeler can work directly in clay, but to begin carving stone without a design in mind is "like building a house without a plan, but worse."

Harris works in marble and ceramic, as well as in cast media such as bronze and "Harrisium," a cold cast medium she created herself from plasters and cements. Her casts have exceptional patinas. Virgin, an opulent, translucent disc of Carrara marble hangs in the arched window of their home and studio, its shape a perfectly inverted echo of the window.

Both sculptors have works that can be shown outside, as Benvenuti stresses, but not left outside permanently. "The great antique sculpture is inside now," he notes, speaking of works like Michelangelo's David.

"It's the acid rain, the pollution," Harris laments. "The air on earth no longer allows marbles to survive outdoors." It is clear t hat she fears for humankind as well.

Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Harris grew up on Rittenhouse Street in Germantown, summering on Martha's Vineyard. She studied ceramics at Tyler (with Rudolf Staffel) and at the California College of Arts and Crafts. Later, at Brandeis, she found sculpture. Sculptors tend to be modelers or carvers (a premise that elicited much good-natured disagreement between the two artists) and Harris insists she is by nature a modeler. Following her graduation, magna cum laude, in 1976, a Thomas J. Watson Foundation Fellowship allowed her a year to study bronze casting in Florence, Italy, and when marble beckoned, she moved to Pietrasanta, the historic hub of Tuscan carvers.

Initially, Harris was a figural sculptor. But once in Italy, she "suddenly began making abstractions -- which I had no plan to do. I lost interest in the figure overnight. I realized I could do whatever I wanted to do with the figure if I wanted to do it." Her bronzes from that period bear witness to this conviction. "Figures come with too much baggage," she continues, "and people assume too many associations."

It was in Pietrasanta that Benvenuti met Harris "for a chance," as he charmingly puts it. Harris was working on her own, but looking for help in constructing molds. One of her friends, Benvenuti's son, in fact, referred her to his father.

"Why you don't make those in marble?" Benvenuti wanted immediately to know. "In my opinion, her maquettes were marvelous and she learned to work with marble very, very fast. Three years, the veterans say, you have to work to learn marble carving. I learn in three months and Elfie in one month."

Harris accepts his accolades. "I am, as my brother says, very 'ept," she laughs, "as opposed to inept."

"I started to paint at seven months," Benvenuti says, speaking of his childhood in Pisa, where he was born in 1926. "My mother still has paintings I made then." Back in the old country, his mother celebrated her 100th birthday on October 4, the same day his only son turned 52.

Benvenuti went on to study architecture at the University of Milan, working both there and in Paris.

But on Pietrasanta, where "before me, millions of sculptors pass through," as he put it, "I build a show." Beginning in 1975 with Sculptors and Artisans in a Historic Center, he mounted an exhibition every year, involving his fellow sculptors, putting large works in the public square and smaller pieces in an abandoned church. Benvenuti designed the advertising posters and programs.

In 1980, after Harris' return to the States to pursue a master's in fine arts at Penn, Benvenuti followed, arriving with $10 in his pocket, having left everything else behind in Europe, to join the woman he loved and would marry.

Benvenuti, an excellent draftsman, was a well-known book illustrator in Europe, but upon his arrival in the States, he found that while editors loved his work, it was deemed "too European."

"It was not saccharine enough for the American market," Harris observes. "Gianni's work is funny and cute, but not sweet. Americans like sweet food and sweet illustrations and sweet art," she continues, citing the popularity of floral and landscape compositions.

Handsome wooden library cases house the many realistic figures and adorable animals Benvenuti sculpted for concerns like the Franklin Mint when he first arrived in this country. "The collectibles market has disappeared," Harris notes. "It's a thing of the past, a market built on sand, not a real commodity. We design collectibles to pay for our art," she freely admits. Still, Benvenuti once designed 50 percent of the line the Franklin Mint marketed to women. Ever versatile, he then designed half the line marketed to male consumers.

"I have never seen a talent like his," Harris vows, bringing out samples of Benvenuti's book illustrations and etchings. Indeed, anyone would be hard pressed to believe one artist could work so masterfully in such a wide variety of styles. "He gets bored doing the same thing for commissions," she notes, so he completely changes his range.

And his clever political cartoons, "which he does just for us," Harris grins, are wickedly funny.

"I am hostile toward English," Benvenuti smiles, having just asked Harris for a word. "I am too old to learn," he insists, waving his gnarled sculptor's hand dismissively, his body language as descriptive as that of Italians everywhere. This is a man who may justly proclaim any language "hostile," because he doesn't need words to get his point across.

From time to time, Harris warns him, "Gianni, a modicum of political correctness, please."

In assessing the art world today, Benvenuti concedes that "there are a lot of different ways to express yourself. I like -- not everything -- but some things." He admires Pollock, Klee, Miro, Kandinsky.

Harris jumps in, "They're old."

Benvenuti nods. "I don't see a painter now that is a great painter."

For her part, Harris feels that "art in America has suffered a loss in status. Politicians are deliberately taking its status away more and more, trashing art in the public arena. I would invite everybody to envision any part of their world without art."

A discussion of the creativity of musicians ensues. Finally, Harris stops it, telling the still-unconvinced Benvenuti, "That's completely wrong."

"No," Benvenuti shakes his head. "I am right. I am always right!" he teases.

But finally, when talking of sculptors, Harris and Benvenuti reach a rare accord. "Rodin was great. Fabulous," Harris asserts.

They could almost be Rodin and Claudel. It's all there -- the age differenced, the two towering talents, the tremendous respect for each other's work, the ongoing, strongly felt arguments and discussions about art. But Harris and Benvenuti have achieved the happy ending which eluded the French sculptors.

Their studio, at 47 High Street, will be open this weekend as part of the Philadelphia Open Studio Tours (POST) program. The sculptors may be contacted via the Web at www.harrisbenvenuti.com.

Harris is a co-chair of POST, which celebrates its fifth anniversary this month. Some 150 artists in 18 neighborhoods throughout the city will participate. On October 9 and 10, studios west of Broad Street will be open. Studios east of Broad will be open October 16 and 17.  Hours for both are Saturday and Sunday from noon until 6 p.m. Maps and a list of artists may be obtained on the Web at www.philaopenstudios.com or by telephone at 215-574-2143.