Artist Leanne Lee added to the history of Yule marble in art with her Artist in the Classroom lesson “Marble Icicles” at West Sedona School in art teacher Sara Horton’s kindergarten class on Thursday, Nov. 21. 

The Artist in the Classroom program is funded by the city of Sedona and pays 24 local artists an hourly rate to give presentations on their techniques in local public and private schools. Lee’s lesson involved a discussion of her artistic process followed by the kids experimenting with painting on a marble slab they could take home with them. 

Some 320 million years ago, the mineral calcite made up part of the shells of marine organisms in the Panthalassic Ocean, the global ocean surrounding the supercontinent Pangaea. As these organisms died, layers of calcite accumulated on the ocean floor, eventually becoming a layer of limestone that under heat and pressure metamorphosed into Yule marble, now mined outside the town of Marble, Colo. 

Yule marble has since become a favorite with sculptors and has been used in monuments including the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington County, Va. “As an artist, I paint directly on the raw marble, and then I seal each piece with a Demar varnish that seals and protects the piece,” Lee said, holding up examples of her typical works, which could feature a cardinal or other wildlife. “I brought these in as examples for the kids to see this is what I do as an artist, and they’re going to be actually working with the same marble slices.” 

Lee uses a wet saw to cut and shape her marble to the appropriate size, along with a hand sander, a diamond saw and some hand-me-down tools from her grandfather John Porto, a shoemaker, including his file and scrimshaw tools. 

Born and raised in a suburb of Chicago, Lee later moved to Gunnison, Colo., where she and her husband spent 40 years raising three sons. While working as an appraiser in the assessor’s office, she toured the Yule Marble Quarry, brought home a piece of marble and started trying oil painting on a new medium. “I wanted to paint directly on the surface of the marble instead of covering it up or polishing or adding other things,” Lee said. 

“I wanted to show the beautiful, pure white it is.” 

She added that her choice of medium offers the added advantage of allowing her oils and bright colors to stand out against the brilliant white marble, while she draws inspiration from nature and wildlife. 

Lee relocated to Sedona about six years ago and has been part of the Artist in the Classroom program for the last two years. 

“Introducing [art] to the kids I love” was what Lee said draws her back the program. “I was supposed to be a teacher years and years ago and that never panned out. And this, I get to do both things that I love, teaching and art. It doesn’t get much better than that.” “You’re each going to get a piece of marble of your own to hang on your Christmas tree,” Horton said to the students. “[Lee] is going to bring you your marble and your sanding paper, and we’re going to sand for about five whole minutes … We might just sketch our design today, which is a quick drawing we’ll paint next session.”