Stone versus metal

It’s funny, compared to the numberr of pics one comes across showing family members posed in front of their new stone fireplace, how few photos there are of folks standing there, showing off a new oil, gas or wood furnace.

Making a mountain out of a hole in the wall

If you can't come to the mountain, bring the mountain to you.  

Standing up for Ca.

Canada Rocks, even in California. We've been revisiting some sites of past dry stone walling advenures here on the west coast. I’m standing in front of the Canadian section of the International Wall which students and I built in Ventura a few years ago.

I’m happy to report it’s looking to be in fine condition. 

The painterly word gets inferred

I've always been impressed with the Impresschists. I do like creating artistic features with mica - quartzite too, but schist is the best material for doing any kind of dry stone work, for my Monet.

I’m liken stone a lot.

The liking of certain things sometimes grows on you very slowly.  I never enjoyed eating vegetables like sweet potatoes and squash when I was young, but as I got older I eventually developed a taste for them. 

Rocks have likes and dislikes too. While it seems to us that they don’t seem to mind being covered with this coloured scaly stuff,  lichens (and other things that grow over the surface of rocks ) do in fact grow on them very very slowly.

I wonder if people who work with stones and rocks for a long time might gradually develop a lichen for the same things.  

Culvert Cairn

For anyone who uses a stone saw quite sparingly I think this video is still worth watching. The finished piece of Goldsworty’s is stunning, however I can’t help but think many of us would have preferred to see it created in a more time honoured way by craftsmen using hammers and chisels a lot more than is shown here. I’m less interested in seeing all the dust of machinery doing the work (music is cleverly dubbed over the screeching noise ) and much more curious about the process wherby skilled masons used merely hand tools to build the many many incredible stone culverts all over America and Europe in the past.

https://vimeo.com/96944998?ref=em-share

Grazed Landscape

Walls and terraces and man made features help define a landscape. In some cases, as in the foothills of the Sierras the lines of definition comes from an animal source. The textured contours of all the hills that I’ve tried to paint here are created by the constant grazing of cattle along parallel lines in narrow terraced elevations around the sides of all the slopes. I find it fascinating. As if the hills are made of many layers of stacked pieces of corrugated cardboard.

Stoneburst

Press 

V

Stoneburst

Stoneburst.  A dazzling compilation of shale and jasper boulders set in a 90 ‘ mica schist quartzite vertically laid dry stone wall we built recently at near Gualala.

Cellular

To me, the most satisfying arrangement of stones always seems to be a cellular pattern.

All the words in the thesaurus to describe cellular help form the image of what stone possibly in it's essential  nature is becoming, or in some distant past, has come from.

amoebic

anatomical

animate

basal

biological

biotic

elemental

essential

fundamental

inherent

integral

live

living

necessary

nuclear

original

plasmic

primary

prime

primitive

principal

Friction

Friction keeps us here, 
just like rocks perched on steep shelves

on the sides of a canyon,

fiction keeps us able to stay in contact

able to hang on.

If things were smooth we'd fall into the abyss,

we'd fall apart.

We say we don't like friction,but what do we know?

Friction is the glue,

the stuff of walls 

and monuments throughout history to love and purpose

And without it we float off...

The stones grip each other, silently holding on 

resting 

waiting

Friction isn't that bad.

it's not like prison. 

it's not like a slippery slope.

it's the stuff of resolve 

Of sticking to it 

of patience  and hope.

It's by friction we rub off on each other a little bit.

we nestle better together,

and hold on fast and slowly,

love each other.

No one has gone there

It seems there are so few untouched places. No matter where you go to get away to experience new territory, new land, new vistas, someone else has already gone before and left their mark. 

And yet ,there still exists a wonderful wilderness in all its pristine untouched beauty, left for you alone to explore . Somewhere there in your own unique imagination it's waiting to be discovered .

Fire Wall

Something or someone was gallantly watching over the two ramparts at Grant Park Ventura . While the ugly urbanite walls were badly singed, the fire barely blackened one corner of the southern dry stone structure.

Checking for fire damage

The huge ‘international wall’, built by our students during the very ambitious Stone Foundation stone symposium of January 2011 at Grant Park in Ventura, was completely surrounded by the recent fires that raged in this area for days last month, but the dry stone wall and ramparts remained miraculously untouched. Chared earth and blackened branches could be seen within inches of the structures.    More photos to follow .

Much of Grant Park suffered considerable fire damage . It will be closed for a while .

Anthropomorphic Limerick

There isn't a nomenclature, 

For rocks that lactate, I am sure.

To say stones need 'weaning',

Lacks geological meaning.

Since 'nurture' just ain't in their 'nature'.

Standing outside the Getty Research Institure , now exhibiting Harald Szeemann Museum of Obsessions

I am privileged 

I am not afraid of sweat 

I am not afraid of aesthetics

I am not afraid of friends 

I am not afraid of enemies

I am not afraid of concepts 

I am not afraid of touch

We are not afraid of third parties 

We are not afraid of your opinions 

I am not afraid of the little, cold hand of the 70's

I am not afraid of the financial ruin of the 80's

I am not afraid of aging in the 90's

Because I'm for getting it wrong

Because I'm for trying it out 

Because I'm for direct contact 

Because I'm for the flicker in the eye that meets mine

Because I'm for other people 

Because we are for unsettling ourselves 

Because we're for enlightened rulers

Because I'm for rebellion against various firsts and seconds

Because I'm for lived counter-models  

Because I'm for new models 

Because I'm for individual mythologies 

Because I'm for human rights 

Because I'm for structuralism

Because I'm for the Eastern,the Western, the Nordic and the Mediterranean, the ephemeral and the ethereal  

Because I'm for poetry and passion

Because I'm for posing

Because I'm for selection

Because I'm against selection

Because I'm for complexity

Because I'm for my simple nature for which everything seems possible

Because I'm for the utopia of the new

Because I'm for hope

Because I'm for questioning the concept of property 

Because I'm for the disruption of questioning through the arresting of ideas

Because I'm for the duality of meanings

ergo the local

ergo the regional

ergo the national 

ergo the international 

Because I'm for anarchy that denies the artist

Because I'm for the artist that cultivates anarchy 

Because I'm for the denial of decision 

Because I'm for the affirmation of this refusal 

Because I'm for open-ended situations

Because I'm against the gravity of property,veto, taboo

Hold on a minute

Are you holding anything back?

I'm holding my position for the ambush which is art

I am privileged because I am dependent and yet independent 

Because I have a moral vein and yet have none

Because I am afraid and yet not afraid

Because I am a daredevil

But I don't want to hurt anyone 

Because I have faith that things that aren't right reduce themselves to absurdity above all in my own case 

i am privileged because i can call this moral/ethical conscience my own and because everything is not so very simple

Amen

H Szeemann speaks

a seedling amen

The facility of stone.

So why bother with these rather challenging kinds of workshop projects ? They're exhausting physically and mentally, and new design ideas are always a bit risky, and have a tendency to look like they could fail spectacularly .  Why knock yourself out with a handful of eager enthusiasts, building all kinds of crazy schist, rather than just be safe and teach a standard course for those who have more of an experience of, and know pretty much already, what can and can not be done with, stone?  

Well, it's because I'm enthusiastic about providing, ( in this case with stone )not just a eye opening , hands on building experience for beginners, but helping demystify or perhaps  unlock in some new way, the human potential for ' collaborative creative accomplishment'  in anything - and thus, potentially, in everything! 

Ordinary people with like interests, who may never have met one another before, get to discover (with the right conditions and a with guidance from an able instructor) what bonding is all about and together make 'something' new  - a 'something' very real, and at the same time quite 'magical' . The effort is worth it . Being provided an opportunity to play and build with stones structurally, those involved  get a taste for creating something unique over a fairly short space of time. The structure they make is not just 'different' or just unusually massive , but often exudes a very permanent sense of proper use of space and time . In the simple act of ordering  natural material we are basically enjoying the art of rearranging elements of our seemingly random existence, (often by luck ) into some meaningful expression of life. Such a fulfilling activity can make us reevaluate other things we do with our time and let our imagination take flight on any given weekend , rather than just do nothing .

Mini Moongate Garden Enclosure

Looking Up

My workshop crew this weekend consists of one man and eight women . This is a good trend . Women generally listen better and apply what is taught rather than just ignore it. I'm happy to say that even though it's a challenging project design and we did get off to a slow start , just  like the students in the photo , everything is looking up now.

Checked off their bucket list .

This weekend nine students get to build a circular dry laid garden feature that will have nine mini  moongates built into it, using five gallon buckets for the forms. What's on your bucket list?

An impressionistic view

Here’s a beautiful garden we visited yesterday.

Many interesting treats for the eye.

However, one section of old garden border wall has nearly rotted out.

The large redwood logs have seen better days.

I see a low dry stone herringbone wall gracing the perimeter.

Replacing the decaying wood border, with a stone wall, could make a good impression.

Floating Boulders

Rather than us being in full control, this project morphed into something i think the stones and the landscape needed it to be. Mark Ricard , Sean and I worked in harmony together with a winning selection of material, jasper, mica schist, basalt, serpentine and gobs of local blue slate  . Almost no saw cuts at all. Just fiddly crunch pulverizing with hammers shaping, and careful finesse fitting. A kind of acoustic unplugged piece that definitely 'sings'.  The rolling curving wall  is framed beautifully in a specially prepared clearing, (what Peter likes to call The Glen). 
It was a pleasure to collaborate with Sean Adcock on this, an original design of mine, which had way more life and vitality waiting to be released than we realized when we first started building it . 
It seems you can't take a bad photo of it . Sean Adcock has proved it .

Photo above by Sean Adcock

Thanks too for hearting help from Melissa Hall. 

Five high or six in a pyramid .

David Allen of stonepointstudio did some amazing stone ball balancing while he was here at Fishrock  

I tried my hand too and was able to get 6 into a pyramid    Which would you say was harder to do? 

Lines and Curves

Lines help determine curves . But curves look wrong if they have straight sections or annoying kinks in them. It is the finessing of the curve and the lines ( the feathering out of all the angles)  that determines the flow and creates a kind of a slow dance. The stones line up to learn their part within the choreography of placement.

The Team

Some of the crew that performed their stone (and food) magic over the last few weeks at Fish Rock  (minus Alan , David, Sean A, Amanda, Sheri,Julien, Robert and Vieve ) ( and Gerry ) Well done guys.

A Portal with Every Stone

David Allen's granite portal installation is completed . It focuses your gaze out over the Pacific Ocean. As with many of his other painstakingly well-crafted pieces the stones focus your view through an opening and some how make  everything your looking at and through more dramatic.

Curve Appeal

Part of the attraction of building (and looking at) a curved stone structure is the variation and graduation,of lights and shadow that happen over the course of the day. A straight wall usually is lit only from one side or the other and has far less interplay of shading and colour. Our floating boulder wall we are building has a swooping curve that catches the light progressively around its contours creating a dynamic merging of structure and movement.