Mauro Corona creates wooden objects. But don’t call him a sculptor: «I am a skilled craftsman as Michelangelo said. Since I heard Valeria Marini say “we are artists” I have removed myself from this category ». For him, hands are much more than a part of the body, intimately connected to the soul, to thought, to the origin: “Touching with the hands is instinctive, whether it is an object or the head of a child, the shoulder of a woman. Jean Giono said that few know the divine ability to do something with their hands ”.
A natural talent is sacrificed by an education that does not give importance to “know-how”. “In kindergartens, in elementary school I would send farmers, mountain guides, woodcutters, carpenters to teach, to give children the sense of using their hands, the ability to do things by themselves”. While waiting for a school reform, the “fashion” of bricolage comes to the rescue. «More than fashion, I would define this trend as a recovery. But not for the nostalgia of a past that does not exist. It is to indulge this naturalness that every being has. This is the future, not to save a job, an ethics, a profession, but to save the last thing that remains of nature in man: hands ». “I am 71 years old and therefore I saw a past where hands and feet were everything,” continues the writer. «I started with my grandfather who made wood sculptures, objects that he then sold in the summer. My parents had abandoned me and I had only this old man to rely on. And while I was forming objects with the lathe I felt good, I didn’t think about pain, melancholy ».
But then he did not become a carpenter but a writer, an intellectual who uses his head rather than his hands. “Working with brain-guided hands is like writing. I write by hand because I feel the idea that goes down from the head, passes from the hands and is colored on the sheet. I need my fingers, then I copy in perfect block letters, make photocopies and send everything to the publishing house. Using my hands takes me away from insecurities, from the weariness of days and life, from melancholy. I would like to set up a manual school, and even if Crozza prompts me, he has understood that I am right. Children are sad because they make them do things that their nature does not feel. Today we are ashamed to say I want to be a carpenter, because you have to be a notary, a lawyer, an accountant ».
For Corona, working with your hands is a reason for living, for others just a hobby. «Also a counterweight to all this technology that in some fashion takes away our natural talent. But it is not a criticism, attention, I just want to remind you that the use of hands is also important for personal satisfaction, for safety. I repeat, it is necessary to teach it to children ».
He and his children did it: «As children they made a wooden or dash nativity scene, they know how to split wood, garden, but I’d like to teach it to your child too. I’d like to take the kids with me. When I was in college with the priests at Don Bosco there were 45 hours of manual work, and also at the schools here in the country. And I repeat, not out of nostalgia but because it is something inherent in man. When the man stood up he was forced to use his hands, it is in the human archetype. Today we greet each other horribly with an elbow, and it is a disconcerting banality, it is better to wave your hands ».
The hand is better than the eyes because it gives you contact. “When you put your hands on a plant she feels you give it warmth. As a kid I used to go with my grandfather to do the grafts and when he engraved the plant he said to me “put your hands around it, so she understands that we care about her, that we don’t want to make her suffer” ». Touch as a sense of choice. «In my village there was a turner, Giacomo, who had fought the war in Africa and who came back almost in the dark. I told him “put a light bulb”, but he replied “I don’t need to see, I hear”. I who was a provocateur then asked him: “if you have to read a newspaper?” He calmly told me “I don’t know how to read” ». Corona continually returns to being a child, when he understood that to climb mountains and life he had only one ally, his hands. And he goes back to the need to educate children to touch: «Children use their hands on keyboards, but it is monotonous. Touching plasticine, wood, clay is touching living matter ».
As he does in his laboratory in Erto, a few hundred inhabitants in Friuli Venezia Giulia in the Vajont valley. «Lately for about a year and a half I have not made sculptures as works of art anymore, I sculpt gnomes, goblins, owls, owls with stone pine and when a child passes I give him one and I see in his face a joy that he will remember for life. When they are grown up they will remember that old man with a white beard who gave them an owl. For a couple of years I got rid of vanity. It’s the age. I was also competitive, in climbing, in sculpture, in literature. It is in the human soul, the more one has been beaten by life, the more one seeks affirmation. But I realized that I was on the wrong path, I was a warrior who was losing, or winning all lost battles, because society was telling me I had to emerge. I wanted the literary prizes, but today, I swear to you, even if they came and told me I won the Nobel Prize, I wouldn’t even look out the door. Now I am a peaceful, serene, not happy man. I haven’t sold a sculpture anymore ». However, he gave one to his “Bianchina”, Bianca Berlinguer. “I sent her an owl down because she needed a good luck charm. I make sculptures that are useful, if you ask me for a portrait of a woman and you put it in the living room after a month you don’t realize it’s there. But if I sculpt a chair for you, you have the sculpture and the chair too. I made some bookcases full of woodland creatures ».
The hands to do and also to reach places perched in one’s soul or in the head. «When you climb it is all a groping, touching. The rock is not dead. I don’t climb to conquer, but to feel, to feel, to touch. Each grip has its own structure. Every centimeter is full of sensations, every meter offers me its sensitivity, I chat with my hands. It’s like playing chess, every move can be followed by thousands, just like in life ».
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