Monumentalithic Art

It's like stones just want to be monumental. They have this ingrained 'monumentality'. Providing you're tuned into their structural and aesthetic constraints, and are careful not to ignore the wonderful potential available to you in the material you're working with, there's a good chance you can make something impressively substantial. 








We started with a selection of elongated cutoffs from the quarry and carefully banded them together, coaxing the form until the iconic mountain/castle shape finally emerged. It was a bit like working clay on a potter's wheel. There was that very real element of risk that it wouldn't work at all. To be sure, the success of this art installation came after much forethought and planning and then a period of just plain trial and error. The project was something of a battle to get our heads round, but in the end the stones won.

They should fix the breaks!

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the speeding car into it,
And spills the upper boulders everywhere,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of reckless drivers is never done.

We should come after them to make repair,
Where they have left not one stone on a stone.

They should fix the breaks and be forcibly driven to assist in the mending of the damage they have done.



(Photos: Loughborough Echo)



(Photo: John Shaw-Rimmington)

The Elements

You against the wall

Sometimes it feels like you're alone against the wall. You've lost all your other pieces. In order to win it seems you've got to singlehandedly outmaneuver the whole other side. 

Get the upper hand somehow and take command of the board. Even if you've got no team left, don't let your team down. 

Try to keep the biggest stones in check and don't let any other troublesome pieces, that are starting to look like they're going fall on you, get out of position. 

Remember it's all a game of strategy. You've got the advantage of intelligence. And besides, stones don't usually move on their own.  

Though your playing for 'keeps', still try to have fun, even if the stones beat you some days.

Universal Gravity

Newton's law of universal gravitation declares that every material thing attracts every other material thing in the universe using a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers.

A Walk Taken on Earth Day

A walk took me yesterday.

It carried me with it wherever it went. 

It danced in the late afternoon sunlight.

I had to learn the steps

And try to tread lightly  

It was a space walk on Earth Day.

I was taken by the path

Taken with its movement 

Drawn to its contours.

I was helped along the way 

to reflect on what it is 

to have a path choose you.

And made to imagine

The distance and time remaining

for this world's days, here on earth.

Trees from discarded stone

Trees and stones have a complex relationship. Trees, like this one in the Lake District in England, can somehow manage to grow out of huge waste piles of over burden stone from quarry operations.




Here's one growing out piles armour stone and rip rap shot rock near Bobcageon Ontario




Here's some trees trying to grow out of the towering piles of unwanted stone up near Buckhorn Ontario.

Yesterday we went there and hand picked uniquely shaped stones and loaded 4 tons of them from that huge waste pile for using in a dry laid tree installation we are going to be doing with the Ennismore Hort and Dist Society this June. 



In a way, the tree we build there in Ennismore will be not unlike the ones I have seen growing in the quarries.  Like the living ones, our horticultural tree sculpture will have grown out of a pile of useless stones.  

Still up in the Air B n B

On our regular morning walk with Farley we pass this unfinished tree house. Though someone has obviously put a lot of nice work into it already, sadly, it's been left that way for many many years. I'm guessing the little girl or boy who this was begun for has moved out and got their own apartment by now.. 

And there's that pile of stones lying there all that time too, presumably waiting to be used around the bottom. 

I'm tempted to go back there some weekend and finish the job myself, but I know I'd probably get into trouble. So the best I can do is Photoshop how I think it might look some day. 

Penning With My Hands

Good ideas are like sheep. They can often get lost. Putting them to pen is the safest way of keeping stock of them.

Always Hire A Professional

Tools are dangerous.

The fact that you used tools should in no way distract from what it is you are creating. Try to avoid the danger of your wall looking 'overworked'. The best way to not have tools dominate the look of your wall, is to ensure there is as little 'tooling' going on, (or at least, as little evidence of the stones having been 'shaped') as possible.

A beautiful wall of Norman Haddow's

Potential

The scope of creative possibility contained in a single stone is inestimably extensive. 

As many things in life do, it increases like, eggs-potentially.

It's all small stuff.

Live beneath your means. Return everything you borrow. Stop blaming other people. Admit it when you make a mistake. Give clothes not worn to charity. Do something nice and try not to get caught. Listen more; talk less. Every day take a 30-minute walk. Strive for excellence, not perfection. Be on time. Don't make excuses. Don't argue. Get organized. Be kind to people. Be kind to unkind people. Let someone cut ahead of you in line. Take time to be alone. Cultivate good manners. Be humble. Realize and accept that life isn't fair. Know when to keep you mouth shut. Go an entire day without criticizing anyone. Learn from the present. Don't sweat the small stuff. It's all small stuff.

Between

Between good Friday

And Easter Sunday

What is that day and long night called?

The stones have not yet formed the arch that follows the arc of spaces between the moon's phases.

The tiny toy man tries to hang the last stone in the night sky .

He works alone listening to the sounds of the darkness —creation crying out for a newness that might never come. 

Each stone has been lifted into place, carefully balanced one on another — delicate eggs suspended in the vacant heavens.

How will they last the night?

Surely the night is too dark and the earth is spinning too much out of control.

This concrete path is getting a make over

Transforming a concrete path to stone one is a pleasure. We are using a combination of thick limestone slabs and pitched granite flagstone on end. Something about the combination makes it look more pleasing than just doing one or the other.

Post on Post

Brian Post of the Stone Trust had a great article published in the May issue of Fine Homebuilding about my favourite subject. Lots of good insight into how dry stone walls are built and details about what to pay attention to, as well as things that indicate that people might be getting a bit too fussy.  Nice work Brian. Anyone following these comprehensive instructions closely can expect to have built a solid wall they can be proud of.

To Everything There is a Season

A time to cast away stones, 

and a time to gather stones together.

Porta-Petra-Potty

"What on earth is he doing? He's been in there forever!"

Thoughts

I am a big admirer of Peter Brooke-Ball's work. He is a London-based sculptor who works with stone, soft metals, leather, hardwood, and rope.The stone and rope piece called  above ,"A Thought', is a good example of the type of sculptures he creates.

Peter writes about his work,

  "There are several reasons I sometimes include rope in my work - I like the idea of the soft defining the shape of the hard; I see each piece as a thought and I want to keep that thought secure and precious, fearing it might all slip away; and thirdly, where I include several elements, I want them to be physically linked, no matter how far apart they may be: my aspiration is to tie together the tops of two mountains."

It occurs to me that, if he hasn't already done it yet, Peter might like to try dry stone walling. I know it gives many us the immense satisfaction of invisibly tying a lot of stones together to create beautiful forms.

Here is a quick rendering of what Peter's wall might look like.

If a tree falls down in the forest, how structural was it?

Yesterday I went for two walks through the forest with Farley; one in the morning and one in the afternoon.
The second time I came by this part of the trail, a huge tree lay fallen across the path where only few hours before the path had been clear.  

I don’t know what structural means. I understand that it has something to do with order and things being put together in the right way.  I understand too, that decorative is kind of the opposite of structural — that something that doesn’t have structure is loosey-goosey and hard to get your head round or get a grip on. And I get it that if were talking about stone walls it has something to do with them being built well — in such a way that they’re not likely to fall over. Yet if it falls over eventually, does that mean it wasn't structural? And if it was, at what point did it stop being structural? How correct is it to think that things that are structural generally last a long time? 

Computers are structural. They don’t last. Wooden fences are structural. Cars are structural. Washing machines are structural. Light bulbs. Paper coffee cups. But more importantly, so many abstract, beautiful, sometimes very temporary things in nature, and all kinds of human activities, are also very ‘structural'.  

How much of it then is structural, in the way we wallers proudly imply it should be? How important is it to think structural has everything to do with being permanent and not much to do with beauty or God forbid, expedience? We seem to think it’s logical to impose a definition of structural on the walls we build where it’s not okay that they behave like anything else made by man or even nature, for that matter.  

Just because we are using a tremendously long-lasting material doesn’t mean there is only one choice but to build things that last as long as is humanly conceivable, no matter how long it takes or expensive it is to build, or train to be able to build them that way. 

Maybe we're going about it all wrong. Maybe building good fences of stone that last only 60 years might make all the difference. It might mean people could afford to build them or have them built and enjoy them in their lifetime. 'Built properly' could mean, well enough to be built at all, and work, and last 'long enough' for a wall. Maybe not to see even a lesser lasting wall in your yard would be a sad thing for someone who really could use one that stayed up at least as long and definitely looked better than a wooden or wire one. In just the same way, maybe planting a tree that is only going to grow sixty years is enough, if it’s going to look beautiful and give you shade and a place to tie a hammock to and maybe firewood after it falls down. 

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe when a tree falls to the ground we should all ask “What went wrong?  Why did this tree fall over? It should never have been allowed to grow here if it was only going to fall over, and possibly end up killing someone.” 

Could it be that only equating structure with durability, the standard becomes way too oversimplified and perspective is lost, to the point that people begin to say “ It's better not to have forests at all, if the trees are only going to keep falling over. We need to replace these dangerous structures with boulders that are certified never to fail.

But then again maybe walls are the exception to the rule. Maybe they, of all the things that one introduces onto a property, need to be presented to the public as immutable ’structures' that presumably could, and therefore should withstand a bomb attack. 

If that's the case, they must never be thought of as being any part of the 'ever-changing' landscape.

  

River Rising.

Here is what the bridge looks like today.  Photo courtesy of Benoit Schryer-Lefebvre.

It's not All water under the bridge.

Yesterday, with heavy rains that fell all day, the Tay River rose significantly enough that water flowed not only under but around the dry stone bridge that was built during last year's Dry Stone Festival in Perth Ontario. All of the surrounding stonework that was built to enclose the swimming area on the same week last August, is now submerged under water too. 

This sudden deluge is very effectively putting all the dry stone work we did there to the test. 

While people talk about examiners and accredited testing, there is no better endorsement of genuine workmanship than having Nature prove your work and reveal that it can stand up to whatever she throws at it.

While proper dry laid walls and bridges are built to stand the test of time too, sometimes time gets some help testing what Canadian wallers build with great floods of water. 

Stay tuned. More photos to follow in the coming days.

Which do you prefer ?

Both these walls use the same stones. The top example — the stones had very little shaping done to them. The bottom one — all the stones were shaped and squared.  Which one of these dry stone walling styles do you prefer and why. Leave a comment or write to me. The pros and cons will be discussed tomorrow incorporating everyone's feedback. 

Don't worry there won't be a test at the end of the week.  

Monumental Deserts

'

How come my dry layer cakes never come out moist enough? 

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The Unknowing Rock

The last of the three rock types, after 'sedentary' and 'metaphoric', are 'ignorant' rocks. Don’t be confused — these are not stupid rocks. Rocks are never stupid. How can inanimate things be accused of not being smart?

As much as they may frustrate you and not seem to do what you want them to do, or break the way you want them to 
break, it’s pretty dumb to shout at them and call them stupid.

No, the rock type we are discussing here, which classify as ignorant, are those without, what might be called, knowledge of good and evil. They are properly categorized as 'without blame', nor do they blame others. Ignorant rocks do not keep a record of wrongs. They are oblivious to unsubstantiated rumours, misguided concepts and imposed prejudices, all of which, sadly, affect people and make them say and do stupid things.

These are not necessarily faultless rocks, but ones that actually can’t find faults in others.

Marble sculpture by John Fisher

They are not only ignorant of their own shortcomings, they are ignorant of ours! Consequently they believe we can do and make anything with them, and so allow us to be infinitely creative.

They take no notice of naysayers, pay no attention to transitory contrivances, and are not thwarted from their purpose by any distractions.

They have transcended the tyranny of 'too much information’.

They choose to not be know-it-alls. They have learned to keep a closed mind, in certain key respects. This is because rocks displaying the very precious characteristic of ignorance are impermeable, and will not 'take in' half truths and oversimplified adages.They stand rock solid against  unacceptable thinking.

There are all kinds ‘truths' written in rocks that seem nonsensical to us mortals.There’s is a folly that seems to go against the grain of common knowledge.

There are certain potentially very corrosive, unedifying things, that rocks don’t need to know. 

There are things you can't unsee, can’t unknown. Ignorance is wisdom in this respect. Those rocks we call 'dumb' process that which is the very opposite of our wisdom.

Ignorant rocks (and those who identify with their type) are not only counter-intuitive, they are contra-smart-ass !

Rocks may be just inanimate ‘matter', but they display an infinite humility, in that they manifest the logical conclusion to the truth that —"the more you know, the more you know you don't know".

So too, sometimes like these rocks, the less you know, the better you can concentrate on the things that matter.  

Metaphoric Rocks !

Metaphoric rocks are not 'like' anything else. Their transmutability makes this rock type very hard to identify. These elusive 'performers' are often found being anything but rocks. They can resemble potatoes or take on musical properties or sometimes turn to candy or even imitate bard chickens. They can become the size of Volkswagens or as small as diamonds. 

Believe it or not some highly successful individuals may even be identified as part of this 'metaphoric' group. Just because someone has certain 'cool' properties however, does not necessarily put them in this particular category of 'rock'. Nor should these rocks' undersides always be confused with bargain sales, their disposition with hard hearts or uncomfortable beds and/or just about anything you might be tempted to compare them to. 

As the name suggests metaphoric rocks are always in a state of constant transition. Though multi-faceted and ever changing in form, they do process one or two recognizable properties that make them very attractive. Most metaphoric rocks, for instance, have a kind of waxy poetic feel to them, figuratively speaking. The rocks appeal to all five senses, but if you're looking for a literal sense, you'll never find it. Their chemical structure is highly irregular. It is of a more descriptive composition than can be identified here.

The best test for a metamorphic rock is to put it in a room of objects and measure how long it takes for it to compare itself. The longer it takes, the less metaphoric its makeup. 

In fact, as far pervasiveness, this rock type 'makes up' the majority of rock-'like' substances on earth! 

But then again, by definition, you will have looked forever and never metamorphic that is 'like' anything.