Tonight is Nuit Blanche, an all-night celebration of the arts in Toronto. As many of you know, in honour of this event we are going to be downtown at Trinity Bellwood Park on Queen Street just east of Ossington Street, putting together a spontaneous '12 tonne composition'. Many wallers, friends of wallers and walling enthusiasts across Ontario will be joining us to create a huge bell-shaped sculpture in the park in the dark. As far as we know, this unique dry stacked stone bell, (having niches and crannies all through it, and brightly lit from the inside) will be the first one of its kind ever built and yet it will exist for barely 7 hours and then we will take it down.
While we build, a full bell orchestra will accompany us in this carzy multi media audio visual architectural/sculptural project.
After many years of almost complete obscurity, it is gratifying to see the craft of dry stone walling starting to become an accepted art form in Canada and adherents to the technique of 'walling without mortar' make such a strong showing in artistic events such as Nuit Blanche.
Why a stone bell?
Perhaps because it visualizes one of the less obvious aspects of stone. It's tone!
