Stone Well Cover

I can only imagine the pride a 19th century homesteader might have had, on the completion of a hand-dug, stone-lined water well. The clear, cold water contained in it would have been an essential ingredient for any hill farm’s success. Some old wells are still in use today at venerable New England homes, while other 30 foot deep examples of the well digger’s art may be found next to abandoned cellar holes in the backwoods. Although underground and out of sight, such a towering achievement deserved to be crowned, and many were, with a beautiful stone well cover. The cover helped keep the well from contamination, and children and livestock safe from falling in.

Lucy's Place

Just as the removal of one letter from the word ”whole” creates a “hole”, the loss of a family member leaves a void for those left behind. One way to help heal the rift is to remember the departed with a permanent marker on the landscape. A stone memorial can fuse the acknowledgment of their passing with the memory of their life on earth.

A Ripple Effect in Stone and Steel

As part of its 40th anniversary, the Montshire Museum of Science in Norwich, Vermont commissioned me to create a permanent, interactive, environmental art piece. The result is a 1,000 sq. ft. dry stone and stainless steel sculpture that rises like a geologic upthrust from the open space alongside the museum entryway. Visitors can walk, climb and sit on the undulant surfaces of the work, or, simply view it on their way to, and from, the building.

Finn Island at Landmark College

During the month of May, a 22 meter long sculpture surfaced on the quad at Landmark College in Putney, Vermont. The dorsal fin of the granite and earth construction rises 2 meters above the MacFarlane Science, Technology & Innovation Center lawn. Once the cover plants are established on the earthen swells of the shark body, the piece will become an inviting land feature for students and faculty to congregate for outdoor classes and conversation.

Snow Fence

The past few weeks I’ve tossed my lot in making changes on a New Hampshire hilltop. It wasn’t the first time a collection of stones there was strung across the high mowing. Someone came in the 19th century and flung up a wall, divining meaning from the random arrangement of stones as they fell into place. And then it was my turn to interpret the stones. The old, sunken wall line coughed up bucketful after excavator bucketful of fieldstone. After spreading the stones out on the frozen ground so I could get a good look at the variety of shapes and sizes, I chose a fair form for re-assemblage.

Dry Stone Walling, StoneDan SnowMarch 11, 2016dan snow, dry stone walling, featured, field wall, lace wall, snow fence, stone

The Shadow Hill Concept

With a strong northwesterly wind whipping “snownados” up from the frosty ground outside, I’m in the studio devising hypotheticals for an unfrozen future. There’s time enough for a wonderland of “what ifs” to decorate the internal landscape when the porch thermometer reads 5 degrees Fahrenheit. Most are just a smokeless pipe dream, but sometimes an idea takes hold and won’t let go until it attains some semblance of reality. Nothing is real to me unless it achieves three-dimensionality. Even at ¼”-1’ scale, a concept materialized in modeling clay is enough to make me a believer.

Stone Memorial Bench

There’s much to be considered in the process of producing of a stone memorial. Even something as simple as a bench requires discussion about setting, size, shape, materials, and the wording, layout and carving of a dedication. Often there are many family members and friends involved in the choices to be made. My task as a memorial designer/builder/installer is to gather individually held emotions and transform them into a collective expression. Hopefully, everyone will recognize something of their personal feelings reflected in the finished work.

Project, StoneDan SnowDecember 19, 2015bench, featured, memorial, memorial bench, memorial stones, stone, stone memorial bench

Cairn With a Twist

As solid as land art is, it’s capable of absorbing an unlimited amount of meaning. Each viewer brings a unique perspective and adds a bit of their own story to the experience of the work. The memory of the work that they go away with is a blend of what they brought and what they discovered while there. The meaning of the work is modified by every viewer. Over time, with many viewings, that adds up to a hefty load of ephemeral meanings, none of which physically impact the land art. It stays the same as its meaning changes.

Artist Statement Stone Clouds

Stone Clouds is a tribute to the sustainable agriculture practiced by generations of Mettawee Valley farmers who've picked tons of stones from their fields, all by hand.

Every year, the plow turns up more stones in Ken Leach’s cornfield. It appears they’ve floated up through the rich Mettawee Valley soil from below the surface when in fact they’ve floated down upon the face of the earth from far above.

Stone Clouds Materialized

The shape of a project is pointy at opposite ends and lumpy in the middle. The spark that starts things off may be as quick and simple as seeing a cornstalk-stubbled field sprinkled with the till of a bygone glacier, and thinking, “What would it take to put those stones back up into the sky from whence they fell?” In between that thought and standing under Stone Clouds at Shelburne Museum yesterday was a year-long ride’s worth of lumps and bumps. The unknown is an uneven landscape. Highs are best employed to gain speed for the roll up out of the lows ahead. Uncertainty provides its own propulsion.

Amphitheater Studies

Amphitheaters have been an interest of mine since the early 1980’s when I applied for and received a National Endowment for the Arts grant to study them. Soon after, I was commissioned to build amphitheater-like seating behind the home plate backstop of our local softball field. The granite terraces have become a well used addition to the summer scene in Brattleboro, Vermont. Since then, I’ve been able to design and build lots of stone seating arrangements but nothing quite like a classic, half-shell amphitheater of old, until now.

Lilyfield 2

The Pictish symbol for time depicts intertwined spirals, spooling outward in every direction from a centerpoint. They saw their movement through time as a dance with the past, in the present, with a nod to the future. For them, where each step is experienced looks and feels different from every other, but all are part of the same expanding destiny.

Tarbat Peninsula

Unlike the rugged upland landscape typically associated with the Highlands, the Tarbat is a low-lying peninsula of rolling ground that was, until recently by geologic time, a sandy sea bed. The rich dark soil supports extensive sheep pasturing, plus, oilseed rape, potato and barley production. Fields are outlined in dry stone walls (dry stane dykes) constructed from sandstone blocks lifted from the ancient bedrock found just under the soil in many parts of the Tarbat.

Lilyfield

The whorling pattern of convoluted forms in the signet carved on the Cadboll Stone has a deep history. Before the pattern became emblematic of Picts culture, the earlier Celts employed a similar iconography in what is understood to be their graphic representation of time. If I think of the signet in terms of time, I see that for the Picts time was not linear. Time pulsed in a rhythm. Time unfolded and turned back on itself. The Cadboll signet lays out all of time’s manifestations in one picture. The concealed is present with the revealed.

Art, Stone, TravelDan SnowMay 10, 2015cadboll stone, celts, featured, pictish stone carving, picts, stone carving

Land Art for the Moment

The notion that great things come from small beginnings is canonized in the proverb; “Mighty oaks from little acorns grow”. And so it was with Pumpkin Seed, the dry stone garden enclosure that grew on a windy knoll in southern New Hampshire last winter. What started as a concept in clay, the size of my hand, turned into a ring of stone too high for me to see over.

Bench Season

It’s a good time of year to tackle the smaller projects. Trenching by hand isn’t so bad if the shovel work can get done in the cool of the morning. A bench can be assembled with a minimum of loader travel across a spongy lawn. This month I’ve realized two designs. Both are basic, three-stone constructions but with personalities all their own. One relies on interlocking opposites, while the other counts on monolithic mass, to stand and stay put.

Dry Stone Walling, Nature, StoneDan SnowApril 19, 2015dry stone walling, featured, maple syrup, mud season, nature, stone, vermont

Newfoundland: Not Just About “The Rock”

Newfoundland’s well deserved nickname is “The Rock.” You can’t go anywhere on the island without running into some new geologic wonder to explore. An ample supply of loose building stone is what first drew me to Canada’s easternmost province but in the five, annual pilgrimages I’ve made to Newfoundland since 2010 I’ve discovered that there’s much more going on there.

Pumpkin Seed Winter Garden (what I did on my winter vacation)

There’s a certain satisfaction in doing something yourself that can’t be achieved in any other way. It’s not that other satisfactions have less strength or value, they’re just different. Each and every stone laid in the creation of the Pumpkin Seed garden enclosure passed through my hands. I say that with pride but also in the full knowledge that a team of wallers under my direction and following my design could have built the structure to a high standard without my lifting a finger. So, for me, it’s not the final result that distinguishes the piece, it’s the process I went through in the past few months to get it there. The daily figuring-out of what needs to happen next and how to get it done under the prevailing field conditions is what the Seed is made of in my mind’s eye.