Culture

"The girls sit before the assignment—identical
blocks of salt—and from tall, precarious stools, / look down into blank planes of possibility. In the end, / though, the only choice is to carve something / smaller. So they begin. Rough chunks like hail / fall before the rasps and chisels' beveled / edges. Salt permeates this air as it has / for years, the floor gritty, their hands, eyes, / even the skylights made opaque with it..."
— Beginning Sculpture The Subtractive Method by Claudia Emerson