Friday, May 21, 2010

Difficult to understand ?



Arches are very unpredictable. They make people do strange things. This man needed to do a hand stand after he helped complete this double arch structure we built in Victoria BC 4 years ago. It was a pretty cool thing under the circumstances; actually it was more of a hand spring. Or was it a double vault? I dont remember. Luckily he didnt fall backwards and die. Who's vault would it have been then? But in any case, the dry stone arches stopped him from falling. In a sense, he was not only standing on his hands, he was leaning on his and our — in this case the students at the Glendale College DSWAC workshop— handywork.

I am a firm supporter of arch structures: the more people can learn about the dynamics and principles of how stones stay together the better. Stone and stonework shouldn't be a mysterious thing. There are no arch villians. And there are no villian arches. Except if they are fake ones, or made of plastic.