Stone Evolution - A Stoney Volition?

I find more and more these winter days I am caught ('captivated'?) between the concept of 'a rock wall and a hard drive'. Reading a bit more about my mac computer, and the interconnection it has with a certain stone material has made me want to get my hands on even more information.

I have discovered that a 'mineral', (the stuff that makes up rock) which is a homogeneous, naturally occurring, inorganic solid crystalline substance with a specific chemical composition, may not be as 'inorganic' as first presumed. A quartz crystal, for instance in a grain of sand, is a mineral, and is crystalline because it has atoms in a regular microscopic arrangement. While life is organized in DNA molecules, various minerals grow by following a crystallized molecular organization.

Silica (SiO2) otherwise known as silicon dioxide, a very special, hard, glassy mineral found in such materials as rock, sand and opal is surprisingly not that uncommon, but in a refined form it is used worldwide in the manufacture of transistors, solar cells, rectifiers, silicones and in micro chips. It is not a stretch to say that this particular mineral transmuted itself into a 'livelier' form of existence associated with the complex digital activity of high-tech computers.

Now there is evidence that certain minerals have 'developed' in other ways too.

New research shows that minerals on Earth have evolved alongside living organisms – and the diversity of minerals on our planet can also be linked to the processes of life. Evolution isn't just for living organisms.

Scientists at the Carnegie Institution say that the mineral kingdom co-evolved with life, and that up to two thirds of the more than 4,000 known types of minerals on Earth can be directly or indirectly linked to biological activity. Robert Hazen and his colleagues found "both the variety and relative abundances of minerals have changed dramatically over the more than 4.5 billion years of the Earth's history." Unique to Earth, volcanic activity, interaction with water and plate tectonics helped create new kinds of physical and chemical environments where new minerals formed over many years, thereby boosting mineral diversity to more than a thousand types.( other less evolved planets in our solar system have far fewer mineral species)

I envision a scenario where a very long time ago, strange primitive rock types began crawling their way out of the same 'primeval soup' that living proteins did, oozing up from the very same amino acids where the earliest forms of life are suspected to have appeared. Was this of their own free will? I suspect so, but unlike us, I think the stones may have some sort of plan.

Wall of Dreams

I got an email yesterday from some friends who had invited us to come and teach a group of enthusiastic people who wanted to know how to build a dry stone wall from local fieldstone on their country property. The students who came to the workshop built a lovely section of wall in their front yard, well back from the road, and well within the what was obviously the established property line.

The husband wrote to say.

Having an interesting discussion with the county roads dept about the new wall. It seems that the previous owners sold a strip of land to the county, so the old iron bar located in front of the wall is NOT actually the property line any longer. Instead the new line is behind where we have situated that wall. So it is partially on the county right of way. The local roads foreman thinks the wall is a hazard. The county engineer thinks it is attractive and well built, but too close to the road for his liking. They want it relocated back about 2 feet ! No kidding. I’m trying to see what recourse we may have, but may need to take it down, which would be very unfortunate.

Very unfortunate indeed.

Many trees, rocks and bushes in Ontario, not to mention countless fences and signs and telephone poles (and who knows what else) are all dotted much closer to the road and are much more of a hazard (just by their sheer number) than the rarer more beautiful 'obstacle' that one simple dry-stacked wall presents.

But basically it's the old 'sandcastle phenomena'.

I remember this from my early days, going on vacation to the lake or the ocean with my parents, and playing on the beach, building sandcastles all day with my friends. I realized pretty early on that there are those who build sandcastles, and then there are those who enjoy knocking them down.' It almost seemed like you could divide kids into two basic categories, the ones who liked to make things and the ones who liked to wreck things.

I still wonder if I was right and more specifically I wonder how this 'plays out' as people grow up. I know that a lot of the rebuilding of walls in Britain is associated with repairing the damage done by vehicles crashing into them. Are the walls always at fault, or are the drivers just big kids, finding new ways to wreck beautiful things?

Anyway, it amazes me how people in authority ( mostly those lacking any 'ability' for creating anything as beautiful as a stone wall) have nothing better to do, or maybe just enjoy nothing better, than demonstrating that they have the 'ability' to force those who make dry stone walls, to take them down.

Or to rephrase the famous line in the movie Field of Dreams....If you build it, they will come,

and tell you to remove it.

Hand Solo

A simple rock and my laptop both get me excited. They call out to me to be creative; to make something or design something new. There are several cool software programs like Sketchup that allow me to experiment with digitalized spaces and planes and eventually visualize new garden structures and landscape features, just as there are piles of sizes and shapes or rocks that lend themselves to experimenting with, and coming up with new dry stone features, much like doing jazz improvisations.

Both mediums are more like having a big sandbox. ( again, sand is made up of silicon the basic ingredient of rocks and my laptop.) They both allow me to mold and add to and take away from an idea or a structure that does not yet exist. They are virtual building blocks.

Every creation whether it be a wall or an entire dry stone folly is an extemporization that if built skillfully enough will last a good long time. Every choice, every placement of every stone, is a creative act. The computer can barely match the potential waiting to be uncovered in a random pile of stones!

Every day, the resulting work of my 'hands' can be a unique installation. Because I work with random material all day and not modular prefitting maunfactured products, it requires that I extemporize and constantly problem-solve. This is not like laying blocks or fitting computer parts together. The stones can not be conveniently locked together in a dead mass of concrete, but will require skill so that they fit utilizing their inherent natural shapes.

This kind of dry laid stonework is an event. It can even be a spectator sport . For those involved, it's a hands-on full-participation happening!

Certain wall projects can be like a kind of jam session in stone. Most dry stone walling is 'performance walling'. Instead of musical or comical or theatrical improvisation it is a 'stone improvisation'. Though you dont often have an audience (until after you've finished perhaps) you go out in just the same way and start stacking, not knowing how or if all the pieces are going to actually fit together, or what exactly it is going to finally look like.

With a random pile of stones you are always taking a risk. This is not like building shelves from a plan in popular mechanics.

Every wall I build is a 'hand solo'. It has never been done before. There are no instructions, no repeating, no rehearsed lines or actual detailed script. My hands discover a way for the shape to get out.

This is why it captures the imagination. It is an evolving process, a building upon itself

After all, if Bobby McFerrin can do musical improvisations with his voice. Why cant we do it in stone?

Two Tablets

The creative potential contained here in the palms of each hand is immense. The new ipad and the common stone may seem to be random unrelated objects that have absolutely nothing in common and yet if you really start to think about it a peculiar parallel starts to emerge. The computer and the rock both can, and have been used to, process and store information, inspire, calculate, control, direct, predict, build upon and channel all the fundamental elements of human culture as well as focus and transform all our creative impulses. The element they both have in common is silicon. Silicon (Si) is a nonmetallic chemical element occurring in several forms and found always in combination. It is more abundant in nature than any other element except oxygen, with which it combines to form silica: used in the manufacture of transistors, computer circuitry , solar cells, rectifiers, and silicones.

The basic ingredient found in most rocks is the very same stuff that makes up our computerized world. The rock and the computer represent two extremes which mysteriously converge in their fundamental role as the basic building blocks of civilization. The rock is the raw computer. It is the source of creativity which has enabled us to order our universe and structure all human knowledge and transform human potential. From the rock caves of early man we have emerged as creatures dependent on stone to house us, hold our livestock, defend us from danger, contain our deities, store our knowledge, house our dead, memorialize the past, celebrate our art and show off our technology. The computer is the latest stage of a simple process of our finding expression and establishing meaning and purpose through stone. The pyramids and standing stones, the museums and libraries the cathedrals and monuments all are architectural circuitry in a vast transforming megalithic megabyte process.

To build a stone wall, (and to 'think with one's hands') is merely to introduce a structural pattern to local randomly generated material using the most elementary manual switching devices.

Hand-drawn Conclusions- Part 2

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The need for closure is universal. Recognizing the conclusion to a period of days or weeks of working with your hands is uniquely gratifying. Yet many activities don't allow for the registering of the actual moment when something is finished. Our daily routine at home and at work can seem almost relentlessness at times. We need to be able do some things every now and then that clearly get finished. Even in wall building, on a long job particularly, it can be difficult to tell when the project is actually completed, what with clean up and removal of the left over stone, or just the knowledge that you still need to come back to add more sections to it here or there.

Conclusion is something more likely to happen if there is a focus, a special element to the project, that you can pace the rest of the work around. If we have introduced into the wall design an interesting stile, or niche or small arched opening, the finishing of the other parts of the project will often be coordinated to coincide with its completion, and so, more than likely there will be this recognizable sense of closure. It is easy to appreciate what you have done when everything comes together this way in a kind of walling crescendo, particularly if there are a number of people working together on the last day. The cleaning up can coincide with the last touches on the wall, so that everything seems to work to this end.

This is usually the time all the cameras come out. While we perceive that the look of the wall has not changed drastically over the final few hours of our working on it, and we all know that it is not going to magically disappear at any moment, there is nonetheless a point when it just seems right to stop everything and take pictures. This is the moment when a wall stops being an event and becomes an 'actuality'. It feels to some extent like the wall has just been born.

While it is very satisfying to be there to appreciate the point when this transition happens, there can, in some cases, be another opportunity to appreciate this phenomena. That is when you are fortunate enough to see it for the first time (again) in a painting or drawing. Through the artist's eye it is as if we are allowed to see what has been 'created' at the very moment of its 'becoming'.

The painting in the photo below is a watercolour an artist did for our client of a dry stone enclosure we built in the backyard of a property in Oakville Ontario several years ago. It represents, to my mind, not just the actual 'enclosure' but the 'conclusion' of the event - a hand drawn conclusion to the whole process of working with one's hands.

Hand-drawn Conclusions- Part 1

I am fascinated with the duality of meaning there exits in dry stone terminology. Bonding, hearting, coping, facing and bedding are just a few of the words that draw you into their double meaning. Now I am thinking about all the aspects of a dry stone wall project that incorporate the concept of 'drawing'. The basic design for instance: I am often asked to do a drawing of what it is I will be building for a client. In a sense these can be thought of as 'pre-drawn' conclusions. There is the initial 'concept', and then there is the photoshop 'application', and then there is the actual 'installation'.

Carts, wagons and hand-dollys (or 'hand trucks') are 'hand-drawn' four-or-two-wheeled devices that help in moving very big rocks. We use them all the time when we are building dry stone walls. They are quiet and maneuverable and far less expensive than bobcats or forklifts. A very large stone becomes a simple problem when you approach it with an industry-grade 'tree dolly' for instance. Two men can usually gently lever it up onto the dolly and draw it to where they need it with little difficulty at all. You just have to be careful letting it down or you may be catapulted into the stratosphere.

You would often see horse-drawn carts, in the old days, being filled with a fresh spring crop of rocks drawn from farmers field's ready to be taken to build walls with. These days it is hard to find a horse that can even do a 'rough sketch', but anyway, even with the help of 'hand-drawn' carts, a job can be 'drawn out' if the weather is bad or if the building season 'draws' to a close too soon, things have to be shut down altogether. Over the winter months new ideas for wall designs can be drawn from other sources such as magazines and websites pages. A good design can draw a client to committing to having a contract drawn up in time to start walling again in the spring. Otherwise you will have to draw from your savings. Ok so there is nothing about a lot of this that is uniquely associated with dry stone walling, granted, but I am just trying to draw out my blog entry for today.

Hands Across The Silence.

My grand daughter was born 5 weeks before my father died on January 29th, 2010. He was eighty-four. He never saw her. If he passes on anything on to her it will not just be through a genetic heredity and not just through the process of our remembering. Yes we will convey to her our love for him and the happiness that is associated with this creative, funny, albeit fairly private man. We will go on enjoying his impressions which he brought to life in his sculptures and paintings. We will reminisce about how uniquely he expressed himself even when reluctantly he was drawn into social conversation or compelled upon to put words to paper. When we sit down together as a family, there will be happy stories and memories, triggered perhaps by a photo or some collective experience, that will continue to help solidify our deep affection for him.

I suppose Fiona will wonder about him. She will no doubt wish she could have got to know him. Maybe it will take the form of simply imagining holding his hands and going for a walk with him, or being carried on his shoulders. Might he have had some wise thing to reveal to her about life? Perhaps she will think about who she is, and wonder if he was like her in any way. When she picks up a paint brush or plays in the sand box and starts to make things with her hands, will she recognize that same inherent artistic skill. She may perhaps sense some 'provision', a kind of environment of encouragement (which has trickled down from him through our family) to trust the out-workings of her imagination.

I look at her hands and see beauty there. I take them in my rugged hands and am amazed by her grasp. Her hands, like my fathers, may never build walls of stone, but I know they will grasp beauty. I sense the immense potential contained therein, a potential to inspire others and to be touched by that same inspiration which is extended to her across the gulf of discontinuity and silence.