For the past 5 years, ABC Worldwide Stone, in cooperation with New York Academy of Art, has sponsored a stone sculpting Artist Residency in Carrara, Italy, as part of its ongoing commitment to promoting the use of stone in artistic practice. Based at Corsanini Studios, located at the foothills of Apuan Alps, the Carrara Residency exposes students to the global art world, helps cultivate lifelong relationships, and hone their craft in an immersive environment.



On April 20th, The Carrara Residency celebration and unveiling was held at ABC Stone’s Brooklyn showroom and warehouse to honor the 2015 recipients of the Merit Award, Marco Palli and Joshua Henderson.

Trained in Civil Engineering and Business administration, Marco Palli has always seen the world in a mathematical way. A multidisciplinary artist, Marco found his way to sculpture after pursuing in-depth explorations into music and literature. Palli describes his creative process as “Meditating about happiness.” At this year’s celebration, Marco unveiled his sculpture Transparent to transcendence, which he characterizes as a conceptual self-portrait. “The piece revisits my own culture,” he says, “exposes my roots as a Catholic man who has perhaps lost his own identity.”

Joshua Henderson was born in 1986 as one of seven siblings, in a small town in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. After studying art at Southern Utah University, and receiving his BFA in 2013, he attended the New York Academy of Art, where he received an MFA with a focus on sculpture. He is a two-time recipient of the Carrara Residency Merit Award. 1st Witness, which was unveiled at the celebration, is part of a series of ten stone carvings which he describes as, “expressing the two-sided nature of things that brings us comfort.”

Other esteemed artists on view included Barry X Ball, Stephen Shaheen, Barbara Segal, Michael Kukla, and Alasdair Thomson.