For Julia Venske and Gregor Spänle, a “shopping spree” is not what you might expect. Last summer, they drove three hours from their studio to buy three blocks—three or four metric tons altogether—of pure white marble. “We get the cut-offs,” says Spänle, referring to the less costly chunks left behind after their favorite quarry in Italy cut stone for a mosque in the United Arab Emirates. The German-born bargain hunters met in 1992 at the Steinbildhauerfachschule in Laas, Italy. In 1996, they traveled to Australia for artist residencies at RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology). Now they live and work between New York and Munich, exhibiting in solo and group exhibitions in the United States, South America, Europe, and Australia.
