For many years I have created hundreds and hundreds of different designs of all kinds of people places and things. Unfortunately the only way anybody would see them was on Veterans Day, Memorial Day or maybe a person's birthday. The reason, the artwork was done on a grave marker or monument. This is the industry that I was first introduced to etching in. And although every piece I did was done with all the passion that I still hold today, they weren't as much an expression of the present as they were the past. What I mean is, people never saw them on a day to day basis. They really never could appreciate the time and effort that really goes into making a work of art etched in stone.
Now that I no longer work in the headstone industry, I find myself trying to take a look inside and really bring out the best of every piece I do. No longer restrained by the restrictions of cemetery, customer or employer. I'm free to explore different techniques and style forever trying to make that perfect etching. This is, sometimes, maddening! But most of the time very rewarding. If a customer is please or even ecstatic, then I have achieved my goal. A wise man once told me, "If you make every piece of artwork like your doing it for a loved one, you can never go wrong." To this day it is my philosophy on how to create art.
Etching is truly a one-of-a-kind medium for many reasons. The first, is you cannot erase. If you make a mistake you had better learn how to hide it. Because the customer will find it. The second, the stone itself. Quarried from deep in the Earth it is as perfect and beautifully flawed, at times, as any other medium. There in lies the challenge. Finding just the right piece is sometimes the longest part of the process. Thirdly, your usually recreating a picture of someone or something and many time this isn't a good picture. So, etching with"corrections" is a skill not for the faint hearted. For instance. You have a $15,000 monument and a picture of grandma and grandpa"s wedding picture. This picture is from the 20's or 30's and has seen better days. If you haven't some kind of an idea what you are doing, you'll be in trouble before you know it. Lastly, etching take a patience unlike any other form of art. Believe me I know. I've work in just about every form from pastel to sculpture. Etching in stone is, by far, the hardest to learn and even harder to master. I've been at it for 25 years now, and I still find new ways to make my work ever more realistic and beautiful.
I hope that one day I will find that niche where my work will become as popular as the slinky or maybe the pet rock. Until then I guess I will just keep doing the highest quality work that I possibly can and just hope for the best. After all, granite came from the Earth and we all return to the Earth, in this way we all deserve our own piece of the rock.
Joseph John Simkus, III - TheArtistForHIre