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June 20 - June 27, 2004 |
Hewing A Sacred Stone of Hope
Italian-Canadian artist Cosimo Geracitano carves messages of peace in nephrite rock
By Sonia Di Placido
Originally Published: 2004-06-06
And with this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King's words have become a prophetic message for a Canadian-Italian electrical motor specialist who, almost 40 years later, has become a significant artisan of immeasurable deeds.
Living in British Columbia and having reached just over 50 years of age in 1998, Cosimo Geracitano was driven by some enigmatic desire to begin sculpting nephrite rock into beautiful stone artifacts. Nephrite is more commonly recognized as the most spiritually powerful stone in both the orient and for the Inuit. Jade, as it is more commonly referred to once it has been worked, is known among thousand year-old cultures as the fiercest stone to wield; it being harder to carve than marble. The rock is recognized as a superior kind of stone that represents the magic of "suffering, endurance, and the indomitable strength of human spirit"; it requires special tools for cutting with regular water drainage for polishing out the excess minerals and particles of dust so that the emerald Jade can shine through.
Cosimo Geracitano had no idea what an emblematic and prolific piece of work he was to embark upon in beginning the first steps to developing his second sculpting project. Out of his drive to create from rock emerged, The Jade Book, A Stone of Hope. The outcome was not something he had intended from the beginning. Instead, he let the experience command him as he worked intuitively to find out what would emerge.
The efforts of Geracitano's work have proved remarkable. In less than two years from completing a nephrite stone bust of his wife, he crafted a model of his next project out of wood. His intention was to carve, out of nephrite, a book with a complex binding mechanism that had never been so skillfully mastered before. (More detailed information on Cosimo Geracitano's binding technique can be found in the published copy of Daniela Geracitano's printed version, The Jade Book, A Stone of Hope.)
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