Golden Threads

It is not just a plutonic intrusion.
We have a deeper connection to stone 
flowing through our bodies.

We feel it in our veins.

And so do they.

Arch Similarities

One of the arches in the Temple of Imperfections, that we're building, is similar to the two arches in the Pyro-mid we built nearly ten years ago. It uses the same chunky Romero red sandstone for the quoins, and is flanked by the same Sydney Peak mica schist material. Both have the same size openings and thickness of walls. 

The variation being, the temple is a segmented Roman arch, the Pyro-mid is gothic shape, and of course the dry stone wall coursing flanking the arches is different, (one being horizontal and the other being laid at a 45 degrees).

It's very satisfying to compare the two structures. Which arch style do you like?

More Kintsugi

Here’s another way of celebrating brokenness, in what otherwise would be a missed opportunity to see the greater beauty and new aesthetic through the somewhat counter intuitive ’rejoining’ of this basalt column, which arrived on site already broken.

Kintsugi

The Japanese art of 'golden joinery' - kintsugi is a kind of celebration of nature's flaws. It is an important part of the japanese aesthetic of wabisabi.   

It involves a careful rejoining of broken vessels, not to disguise the vessel's brokenness, but to honour an often unrealized transcendent perfection.  

Great appreciation for an object is shown by accepting cracks not as annoying imperfections but as an opportunity to rejoin broken pieces (if necessary) and fill the resulting seams with gold. 

Nature is the example here. It loves filling the flaws and fissures of rocks and stones with golden threads of quartzite and beautiful veins of other colourful contrasting minerals. 

The universe, it seams, embraces imperfections - and so should we. 

Imperfections

This January our intention was to create a pleasing 6 sided dry stone hexagonal structure that incorporated 6 different types of stone and had 6 openings ( three segmented arched doorways and three arched inner niches )

We learned about ourselves and each other as we shared the various tasks of measuring shaping sawing grinding dressing and fitting . All this was done with a realization that even though accuracy was tremendously important it was inevitable that imperfections would have to be assimilated. 

As the thing grew and began to take shape we sensed that what we were building was in no way perfect but rather a kind of temple of imperfections . That is, a place where we accept how certain imperfections if accommodated correctly can be what makes a piece perfect. After all, is it not possible that imperfections can accumulate in such a way as to cancel out each other and so not be imperfect at all, but begin to approach something, quite delightfully, the opposite?

Human Landscapes

The hills on the drive south from San Francisco look like the folds of great blankets covering improbable combinations of giant sleeping bodies