A stickler for details
Granite sculptor Clint Button takes pride in making each project as perfect as it can be, down to the finest detail.
Photo by Milton Morris
A.C. “Clint” Button II
Age: 51.
Claim to fame: Industry-trained granite sculptor.
Lives in: Boiling Springs, not far from where he moved at age 13 with his family. Native of Vermont.
Side project: A motorcycle enthusiast, he helps organize Chesnee’s annual Antique Bikes on Main festival.
Cool fact: Button honed his talent by ice sculpting.
Why he works in granite: “All the stone does is tell you the truth. It tells you exactly what I did.”
Get more: Learn about Clint Button’s work at carolinascuplturestudio.com.
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You could say Clint Button’s passion for sculpting granite is in his DNA, but it may be truer to say it’s in his psyche.
Most of the true granite sculptors left are centered in Vermont, where Button is originally from, but even though the painstaking work may be a dying art, he maintains it's worth saving in this country. “We can still do this in America.”
He bought his first wood-carving knife on his 6th birthday, but was warned against following relatives into the granite industry because of the hazards, including the dust exposure unprotected sculptors and stonecutters like his grandfather often endured.
He became a chef, apprenticing at The Piedmont Club in Spartanburg in the 1990s, where he seized the opportunity to sculpt ice for parties. His culinary career took him many places, including the famous Commander’s Palace in New Orleans, yet also led him down difficult personal paths. “It’s a really hard schedule,” he says. “It’s really hard to stay sober. It’s really bad on marriages.”
By 2000, he accepted Christ and a calling back to Vermont, where he learned granite sculpting in a master's studio, working under a cousin. Three years later, he returned to South Carolina, started a family and opened his own studio in Boiling Springs.
Much of his work is in memorials, each unsigned project as perfect as Button can make it. In his shop, he points to a headstone for a veteran and speaks of the importance of correctly rendering the intricate detail of the Marine Corps emblem, right down to the twists of the anchor rope.
While he says pieces may take months or years to finish, the results can be transcendent. “The work is beautiful because God lets me do it and I don’t interfere.”