Joke Verhelst was born in 1972 in Belgium, in the region of West Flanders where it is said that people are literally "born with a stone in their stomach." Her father introduced her to stonework when she was a child.
In 1990, she began her training and professional life as a nurse. Her hands provided care to patients in hospital wards and then in the operating room.
In 2009, the artist settled in Strasbourg, France, but it was not until 2015, thanks to an internship, that she "encountered" sculpture: it was both a revelation and a revelation. Joke Verhelst rediscovered her father's gestures, the pleasure of discovering the feel of rough stone, of sensing it and shaping it.
In 2015, she gave up her first career and devoted herself to sculpture, organizing her first exhibitions.
ARTISTIC TRAINING
Self-taught, Joke Verhelst perfected her technique with sculptors Boutros Romhein of Arco Arte in Carrara and Claude Bertrand in France. It was in their studios, during internships from 2015 to 2020, that they taught her how to use specific tools.
" Art is born at the point where the hand, the tool, and thought meet."
André Leroi-Gourhan
Joke Verhelst's work is rooted in this essential encounter between material, thought, and gesture.
Joke has always chosen marble, this ancient material that intimately connects man to nature and time.
Before the first blow of the mallet, there is the search for the block, patiently unearthed in the quarries like a blank canvas.
Then comes the physical work: sawing, clearing, carving, striking. The whole body is involved. The breath sets the rhythm for the mallet's blows, the arm grows heavy, dust rises like a veil of time.
This gentle struggle between the force of the gesture and the resistance of the marble becomes a conversation. The relationship with the material is never a conquest but a patient listening. The hand extends the thought, and in the slowness of the polishing, the stone softens. Thus, the work of force is transformed into an act of caressing.
Her works are part of an exploration of movement and the transformation of matter. Her sculptures are silent presences that inhabit space in a dialogue between fullness and emptiness. Driven by a quest for balance and purity of form, they allow the essence of the stone to emerge. Joke conveys a simple and universal message: unexpected grace can arise from the rawest hardness. Within the weight of marble lies lightness, within its roughness lies softness after polishing, and within what appears inert, it reveals movement.
His pieces do not merely describe a form, they open up an experience: touch becomes reading, sight becomes palpable.
FIND OUT MORE:
The House of Contemporary Mosaic: https://maisondelamosaique.org
Sculpture by Boutros Romhein, Carrara, Italy: http://www.arcoarte.i
Discover my sculptures:
https://jove-art.com/jove-sculptures
Discover my mosaics:
https://jove-art.com/mosaiques-2