The woman weeping in front of Maria Battista’s sculpture wasn’t having a breakdown. She was having a breakthrough.
"Tell me about what’s going on for you," Maria said quietly, stepping closer. What followed wasn’t a sales pitch or an artist’s explanation of technique. It was an intimate conversation between two strangers connected by the emotional current running through bronze and clay. The woman never bought a piece that day. Maria didn’t care.
"That emotional connection—that’s my success," Maria explains from her Colorado Springs studio. "To me, that’s the reason for art. Not just to impress people or sell to them. It’s to help them feel something."
This philosophy of art as emotional excavation rather than technical exhibition lies at the heart of what Maria Battista brings to her upcoming sculpture retreat at the Estelle Center for Creative Arts. For this accomplished sculptor and 30-year teaching veteran, the question isn’t whether you have talent. The question is whether you’re willing to trust the process.

From Teacher to Master

Maria’s path to sculpture mastery took an unexpected turn when she found her mentor—a Russian teacher whose honest critique taught her to see differently. Her own teaching style balances that rigorous tradition with American warmth. After three decades teaching in public schools and countless workshops with adults, she’s learned that teaching art means understanding cognitive development as much as aesthetic principles.
"There are stages of cognitive understanding that you’re just not going to be able to force," she explains. Students always want to smooth their sculptures with their fingers before the underlying structure is ready. "They’re imagining the end product and they can’t wait to get there. So I help them tolerate a messy surface for a few minutes."
This patience with process reflects a deeper philosophy. "Art is something that requires that we tolerate a long period of ambiguity," Maria notes. "If we try to force our will on our materials and process, that produces something mechanical and can lead to a lot of inner frustration."

Hydrogenesis by Maria Battista

What the Clay Teaches

Maria’s upcoming Estelle Center retreat focuses on sculpting an 18-inch high nude figure from observation of a live model. Students will begin with quick clay sketches to develop a feel for proportions and the movement of the body in space, then study skeletal landmarks and build understanding of the ribcage, pelvis, and spine.
The figure is constructed in logical stages, adding more complex anatomical information in chunks as the week proceeds. With over 30 hours of observation of the model, participants will develop their sculptural eye. Practice sessions without the model tackle the more difficult aspects: the portrait, hands, and feet.
Throughout, Maria will provide ongoing, individualized demos and critique. She’ll sculpt directly on student pieces, letting them see exactly how she works. "In clay, making errors is no big deal. You can fix them. So I try to encourage people not to be afraid to fail."
The emphasis is on learning to see and respond to form and volume, to capture the softness of the human being with pleasure and aliveness. But the technical instruction serves something larger. In a culture that often avoids emotional depth, the studio becomes one of the rare places where that depth is celebrated.
"Where in your life is someone deeply empathic with you and teaching you to be deeply empathic with yourself?" she asks. "I think as a teacher, that’s an important role—to create an environment where that’s allowed and encouraged."
What emerges consistently surprises even experienced instructors. "Everybody’s going to be doing the same process, but everybody’s going to produce something really different," Maria observes. "And I want people to accept what they produce because it’s accepting who they are."

Calypso by Maria Battista

The Unconscious at Work

Maria’s own work explores the territory between technical mastery and unconscious revelation. She references sculptor Paige Bradley, who in frustration threw a sculpture to the floor where it cracked. Bradley left the cracks and illuminated them from inside, creating one of her best-selling works—a meditating figure with light pouring from its breaks.
"You allow the unconscious to work. You allow the mistakes to work," Maria explains. "That’s the beauty of art—you’re never really there. I learn about myself through what I have produced."

An Invitation to Trust

When Maria Battista brings her sculpture retreat to the Estelle Center this summer, participants won’t need prior experience or natural talent. They’ll need curiosity and a willingness to trust the mess—to believe that somewhere between the first awkward lump of clay and the finished piece lies a process that can be learned, practiced, and ultimately owned.
"Everyone’s an artist. Every child is an artist," Maria insists. "We’re all born wanting to create things. So art is a skill that can be learned."
Come ready not to prove you’re talented, but to learn sequential steps that humans have refined over centuries. Come ready to make mistakes in a material that forgives them. Come ready, perhaps, to have that breakthrough disguised as clay on your hands and the unexpected recognition that you’ve been an artist all along—you just needed someone to show you the steps.
As Maria’s philosophy extols, the question isn’t whether you can do it. The question is whether you’re ready to trust yourself enough to try.