Themes of Love

"My themes come from an intuitive way of understanding other people," says Agid. "We only think about each other when near death. We should take time to understand each other, not criticize each other."

These feelings, so resonant in Agid's work, came from her close relationship with her large, Yugoslavian family. She speaks happily of the warmth she felt from both parents, and says her father told her, "Don't follow the crowd. Be an individual."

While such warmth inherently relates to her mother and child compositions, it also informs works such as "Tug of War," a more confrontational work that nonetheless suggests unity and rhythmic flow. One of Agid's themes, she says, is the struggle for survival, the constant play and interdependence of different forces, ideas and points of view.

Agid's sculptures personify love and support, and the artist's friends and acquaintances says she does, too. "I always feel so good in her presence, you just feel the reverence she has for people, the celebration of life," says Annie Balderas of Torrance, who has purchased three of her works. "She's such an earthy, beautiful woman."
She says she has to be spontaneous ÷if the piece is overworked, she doesn't even want to touch it. To guard against that, Agid develops three or four pieces at once, working feverishly on one for awhile and then moving to another when the freshness dissipates.

Agid has two studios, one in an abandoned World War II aircraft plant in Torrance, the other at her home in Rolling Hills. For the last five years she has regularly gone to Pietrasanta, Italy, to work for weeks at a time. Pietrasanta, whose name means "holy stone," is a small town with several foundries, quarries that house stone from around the world, and an abundance of serious sculptors working on their art. One of Agid's sculptures is displayed in the gallery/library there.

It is here that Agid finds her marble and casts her bronzes. Choosing the right piece of marble is an art all its own. Agid takes several marquettes to the marble yard. Even though the raw marble looks flat, almost chalky, Agid can tell when the slab will work for a particular piece. She'll choose a beige toned for one work; a pink Portugal for another; black Belgium for a third.

"I look at the marble and like the warmth of it. I know when my piece will fit in it," she says. And often, instead of having the marquette dictate what stone she'll use, she looks at a piece of marble and becomes inspired.

Working with chisel and hammer, she begins to "rough" the marble so it approximates her design. She'll often work with an Italian assistant who is specifically trained to do this kind of work. They'll leave a few inches all around. This is when she may deviate from the marquette. "You do get surprises sometimes, veins and colors in  the stone," she notes. "When you're working, it changes constantly."

It may take Agid months to complete a piece once this stone is shipped back to her studios, and the finished work will usually be about half the size of the original piece of marble. While man sculptors avoid the chancy types marble,  Agid sometimes chooses marble that may take a chisel blow wrong and shatter. Agid finds the sculpting process invigorating. "When you get the vision and it starts to move," she says, "the marble is like butter'