Movement is critical for getting into the moment, for being of a time and in a place. Perhaps the best thing an artist can offer a viewer is the chance to become a little more aware of themselves. Outdoor art spaces hold the potential for that to happen.

A recent special event at the Shelburne Museum drew a large crowd on a perfect summer evening. I was there to welcome visitors to Fantasy Topography, my temporary, environmental art installation in a pine grove on the grounds. It was great to see lots of people walking around and in the sculpture. Many thanks to those who stopped by to chat, and to the staff for all they do to make an enjoyable time for those attending the museum’s once-a-month, Free Friday.

Stone Walls Grow Value

Most of the works done in the dry stone trade take place without fanfare. They serve basic needs by establishing boundaries, buttressing slopes and moderating ascents. They’re experienced as well-functioning while being hardly noticed. In fact, one sign of a successful new project is that those using it feel that it must have always been there. That doesn’t mean that it can’t be a sight to behold. Functional stonework can be arrestingly beautiful, often the more so with age. Stonework, done right, proves its worth day after day, year after year. The expense is left behind while the value continues forward.

A Stone Livestock Pound

What was the first public structure built to safeguard harmony in early agricultural communities? Who were the hog reeves and why were they sometimes recently married, young men? What did impecunious pound-brechers do to deserve 30 lashes? These questions and more will be answered during a program I’ll be giving at the Dummerston Historical Society’s quarterly meeting Thursday July 18th at 7:30 pm. I hope you’ll join me for an evening exploring the history of Dummerston’s town pound and take a walk around the dry stone pound, erected ten years ago, next to the Historical Society building.

Length In: Developing a Frame of Mind in Dry Stone Walling

A belief set in the mind of many beginner dry stone wallers is that a wall is what it looks like on the outside, when it actually is what is not seen, on the inside. To accept a wall stone at face value is to believe that what shows is most of what that stone is, but in a well built wall, most is concealed, securely trapped inside the construction.

Self-Archeology in a Stone Environment

The most enjoyable takeaway from examining a wall that has remained true is a validation of the beliefs held while bringing it into being. Dry stone walling is about action in the moment but the results take a while to be proven out. The labor of building is lightened by seeing how honest effort ultimately endures.

Rocking Back, and Forth

Nothing begins without looking back, so, to get 2019 started, I’m taking stock of 2018’s doings.
Thanks for following along. Now, let’s get this new year rockin!

Embracing Ambiguity in Outdoor Spacemaking

It’s the spacemaker’s obligation to create flexible surroundings that can adapt to situations as they develop. Not knowing what’s to come is unsettling, but without one foot in the unknown we can’t prepare a place for advancement. A built outdoor environment can be exciting simply for its possibilities.

Arch Bridge Workshops

While there remain, across New England, examples of stream-vaulting bridges built more than 100 years ago, the builders of those spans have long since left us. That’s why it’s particularly poignant that The Stone Trust’s recent tour of historic dry stone bridges coincided with the construction of a new one.

Dowsing for Genesis

Basically, wallers are spare-parts jobbers. The loose pieces of indigenous stone they collect and parcel out are really nothing more than the duft of earth’s crowning mantle. In rare cases, bedrock, stone’s “birthmother”, is present on a building site and can come into play as a defining element of a dry stone design.

Modeling Clay as a Medium for Design Development

Clay sketches are the instruments of communication I use to express ideas. The truthfulness of any idea is uncovered by thinking and working it through using three-dimensional materials. With clay, a concept forms through the fingers. Questions about a design come up in the activity of applying clay that might not otherwise be addressed until a project is underway. Solving problems in small scale is more easily done than at the full scale of a construction site.

Dry Stone Walling Workshop at The Stone Trust

It must be said, “The Stone Trust Has It All.” That’s the conclusion I came away with after spending the weekend instructing a Features Workshop there. Not only were the participants an enthusiastic group of talented individuals, the panels they created display the wide variety of possibilities that dry stone offers.

The Solitary Stoneworker

Conditions being what they were of late with snow storm after snow storm, I stayed away from the stone project in-progress and gave myself a propertyless assignment. The premise was to compile a collection of photos that illustrate the work life of a solitary stoneworker; with myself as the subject and past projects as the source material.

The Holy Well

Excavation of the hillside spring revealed layers of geologic stratification. Top soil lay on coarse gravel over pure sand on top of clay hardpan. The design called for ground water that trickled out of the sand layer to be trapped in a hollow under a half-shell overhang. Recycled slate from building foundation ruins and cobbles from a gravel pit were combined to shape the dry stone installation.

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.

The Growing Pumpkin Seed

Temperatures in the 20’s F, steady 10 mph winds gusting to 25. Stones fastening themselves to the surface of the ground with frost. Time to close down walling activities for the year, right? Wrong. The wind chill was definitely bracing on the work-site hilltop this week but building went on apace. In fact, some things got easier as a result of the cold. No more wet gloves or bucket loader-eating mud holes. Underfoot turned to hard, no-slip surfaces, bringing welcome stability for plucking and plopping stone.

Dry Stone, Dry Stone Walling, Project, StoneDan SnowNovember 22, 2014dry stone, dry stone walling, featured, pumpkin seed, stone

Building the Ruminator

In the beginning the idea was to make it a solitary object out in the field north of the garden. I had visions of a compost carousel with four pie-shaped stalls. Then it was a long barrow-shaped affair with tractor ramps to the top of the bins. I knew little about composting but I was having lots of fun with modeling clay imagining the construction of a dry stone Ruminator. Scale model making is an enjoyable pursuit that helps develop spatial acuity. The process of shaping clay is slow enough for deliberation to take place and fast enough for a form to observably emerge. Results unfold in an organic fashion.

English Harbour Arts Centre Stone Art Workshop

The English Harbour fog machine has been churning out invisibility for a solid 24 hours. Before I arrived here a week ago the southwest wind that funnels moisture off Trinity Bay into the land bowl above the harbor had kept the village cloaked in a cotton wool shroud for fourteen days. Fortunately, the recently concluded environmental art workshop maintained blue skies above for each and every one of its five days. There were long-distance views in every direction from the headlands where the six participants worked on their dry stone installation.

Woody Point Workshop

Last evening the atmosphere softened to dusty rose across the far horizon. An osprey wheeled its way around the shoreline heading across Green Bay toward an incandescent object rising from the shimmering surface of the sea. Two hours earlier, I was at Ken Tuach’s stone yard wrapping up a day of DSWA examination. E and I then made a mad dash from western Newfoundland to the Baie Verte Peninsula just in time to glimpse the majestic iceberg across the water before the darkness descended.