Birmingham man turns gift of carving stone into gift for God’s use

To the untrained eye a block of stone is nothing more than that — cold, lifeless, formless. 
   
But to Dale Chambliss, a Southern Baptist minister turned professional sculptor, the stone itself is a piece of art — overflowing with God’s creative energy, crying out to be formed and molded into something beautiful.
   
Chambliss, who with his family now attends Vestavia Hills Baptist Church, didn’t always see the stone’s potential.
   
For the majority of his adult life the Huntsville native has been a pastor.
In the 1980s Chambliss began to dabble in oil painting, pouring the stress of leading a growing church into the canvas.
   
In 1996, while shepherding Southside Baptist Church in Birmingham, he  saw a documentary on the Discovery channel that set him on a path untraveled by most, especially Baptist ministers.
   
“It was about an American working in Italy as a sculptor, and I was fascinated by that work and wanted to pursue it,” Chambliss said.
   
“Southside was a great church, but I needed a break,” he said.
   
So Chambliss resigned from Southside Baptist, and he made plans to move to Carrara, Italy, home to some of the best sculptors in the world and blanco carrara, the white marble  from which Michelangelo carved “David.” 
  
With his wife and two children safely settled in Destin, Fla., Chambliss moved to Carrara where he became an apprentice to Carlo Nicoli, one of Carrara’s foremost sculptors.
   
“I spent five years working under Nicoli,” Chambliss said. “He criticized my work, made me feel like I was two feet tall, but he also taught me a lot, much more than I could have ever learned in a university setting.”
   
Chambliss learned the tools of the trade — how to use the chisel, diamond saw and grinder. When he wasn’t molding life into the stone, he toured the ancient city’s gothic cathedrals and magnificent museums, taking in their generous sites and sounds.
   
After his stint in Italy, Chambliss took yet another leap of faith and opened his own studio in Florida, where the ocean replaced the grand cathedrals as his inspiration. He worked there for three years, refining his talent as he sculpted the nearly-extinct sea tortoises that migrated to the Florida coast every spring and the sharp lines of the sailboats that lined the seashore.
   
Although Chambliss poured his faith into everything he sculpted, he didn’t create a truly “religious” sculpture until St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Fort Walton Beach commissioned him to sculpt a piece to commemorate the sanctity of human life.
   
Using the 20-inch block of blanco carrara he brought back from Italy, Chambliss lovingly molded the precious rock into the pierced hands of Christ holding a newborn baby.
   
“I was carving Christ’s hands, which gave me this tremendous sense of humility,” said Chambliss of the sculpture he worked on for three months. “I am personally moved by it, and I hope others are moved by it; that it makes people think about the importance of life.”
   
Creating the distinctly Christian piece helped Chambliss recognize the potential influence his sculptures could have in mainstream Christianity.
   
“That time of redirection brought me to the point where I was ready for God to use my art in a specific way,” said Chambliss, who returned to Birmingham two years ago and works as a stone carver at Garner Stone Company. “I see Him using me to relate to people and I want to do that through my work.”