Angela Corrias meets artist Marcia Bennett-Male
“I can teach anybody to carve!” This is Marcia Bennett-Male’s promise, maybe because she rightly saw in me her potential biggest challenge. Marcia, in the public mind, is considered a complete artist. Not only can she carve, which is her main activity, but she can draw, she has the imagination to see the object in the untouched stone and she is able to pass her skills and passions onto all of her students, who range from three-year-olds to teenagers to adults.
She chatters away while showing me the different pieces of art kept in her cosy studio in the green borough of Sydenham. In her forties, Marcia looks extremely glamourous, gliding around her new creation, a small tortoise, with that dancing-like allure typical of black people.
She was born in London but her parents came from Jamaica in the late 1950s during the decolonisation migration movements that brought to Britain the workers essential for the country’s reconstruction after the Second World War.
While chiselling with quick and almost imperceptible strokes, Marcia talks about her freelance activity in an enthusiastic but realistic manner:
“As a black female artist I have to make a double effort to convince a client that I can do the job.”
Tellingly, all Marcia’s work contains social and political elements that reflects her life, her background and her will to make heard the voice of a black female artist in 21st century Britain.
These efforts have been appreciated since among her clients she can boast Dulwich Picture Gallery, Southwark Council and the Royal College of Art. Marcia has lectured at the British Museum, Tate Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park Victoria & Albert Museum and carried out carving workshops at the Africa 05 Carving Residency, Castle Day Mental Health Group, Battersea Park, Compton Verney and the British Museum and worked in the United States.
After twenty years of both artistic and commissioned work, Marcia is willing to broaden her skills and her next destination is Carrara, in Italy, to learn how to carve marble with a particular Italian technique. She has loved displaying her works in many exhibitions, both solo, such as Women Artists Slide or Kitchen Tables Last Threads, and group, such as Transforming The Crown in the United States and Dulwich Festival Open House in 2007.
You can make a journey through her work by visiting her virtual gallery.
