The music was the sound of the tools hitting the stone. The teacher was Jose' de Creft, a contemporary of Picasso, and he was critiquing the work. He turned to me and said, "What's your name?" and I said Rosetta Morgangetter which was my married name. He said "Where's your work?" and I said that I hadn't begun yet. He said, "When you begin, get the biggest piece of stone that you can carry. Don't work like these people here with cookies."
The first piece I ever worked on was Vermont marble and it almost broke down the rear of our car. I work only by hand. I don't use power tools, which I guess is unusual. When you're working with marble it's not like going into a room and picking up a paint brush. You have to have a special place, an isolated place, because marble gets into everything. You have to dress for it. And you can't do it for an hour. It has to be for half a day at least.
I learned that if you make a mistake on a piece of stone, it can be very serious. It will mean that your original idea is destroyed. But you can turn the piece upside down, do something else, and it's just as valid. Sometimes something better comes out of it. When I did my first piece, I loved the material as it was. I didn't want to break into it. It took me days to risk doing that. I really couldn't decide what I wanted to do. Finally someone said, "Just chop into it; just make the first blow." That's what I did and instantly, I saw something in the stone, I went on. I was very influenced, although it doesn't always show in my work, by Rembrandt. And I love Brancuzzi.
I guess the parallels between acting and sculpture are risk-taking. It's turning the piece upside down. It's another way of saying, "What if?"
Piper Laurie began her career ar Universal Studios, where she starred in over twenty movies, including Louisa and The Prince Who Was a Thief.
After struggling to find more challenging material, she went to New York to seek serious roles in live television. She won Emmy nominations for the original "Playhouse 90" production of Days of Wine and Roses and the "Studio One" productions of The Deaf Heart and The Road That Led Afar. During that time she also appeared in the twentieth-anniversary production of Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie.
She returned to films in The Hustler. Her performance won her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. After making The Hustler, Ms. Laurie retired from acting for a number of years, moved to Woodstock, New York, and raised a daughter, Annie.
In 1976, she returned to films in Carrie and Children of a Lesser God, which both won her Academy Award nominations. On television, she won Emmy nominations for her work in The Thorn Birds, "St. Elsewhere," and The Bunker. She won an Emmy for her performance in The Promise.
She has exhibited her sculpture in a gallery in Woodstock, New York.