Hand Picked

Art City in Ventura California is an urban island where stone and stone artisans meet. The art of working with stone thrives here and morphs and transforms into a crecendo of imaginative projects involving every combination shape colour and texture of the rocky stuff we wallers merely stack in rows. It manifests itself in many different sculptural forms here- rough natural and smooth and highly polished. Water may flow from it. It might be a figurative baslt tower a delicate alabaster bust an animate marble lifeform or a weird and wonderful montage of found stone artifacts and tailings. It is a place where people are thinking with their hands

Paul Lindhard is the humble motivating force behind this amazing wonderland of stone. He is also the sculptor, businessman, teacher,and co-facilitator of this and last year's Stone Symposium. The carving workshop was based on the Art City property and was taught this year by well known British carver Nicholas Fairplay. Nick gave a wonderful presentation on Tuesday showing many amazing examples of the intricate carviings he has completed in such important places as Hampton Court and St John the Divine Cathedral in New York

Yesterday morning several of the Stone Foundation Symposium participants took a field trip to Stone City. I was admiring the stone 'contour' piece (shown above) and happened to bump into the artist who created it. He explained how the piece had to combine elements of a sculpture and also be a pathway where foot traffic and wheelchairs could safely pass. It was made of thousands of hand picked stones he had brought back from the beach. This undulating pebble mosaic by Kevin Carman reminded me of a miniature crevice garden. It also was reminiscent of some of the intricate historic pebbled pathwork I saw in St Andrews in Scotland.

Kevin's website is kevin-carmen.com