Our involvement in Nuit Blanch last Saturday allowed many Torontonians to experience dry stone walling as an art form. Usually stones walls made without mortar are things you merely drive by and at best perhaps say 'look, isn't that nice'. But last Saturday the act of walling somehow moved from being merely a craft, or even a kind of visual art form, to that of being 'performance art'. It may seem strange to think of building with stone as something approaching the realm of dance or theatre, but when you eliminate all the mortar, the dusty work site, the cooky cutter shaped material and all the noisy tools, while at the same time ramping up the creative part by introducing improvisational elements, you get something akin to entertainment. Meanwhile the live music played on 'hand' bells by the Bronze Foundation who accompanied us at this event, very much added to the perception of what we were doing being a performance. Many of us had this sense that the actual process of building of the bell was as important as the finished product.
