Time to 'Paws' and reflect on D. S. Walls.

Animated creatures calmly discuss

the merits of

'Walls Without Mortar'

(Press on the green title above to see a Youtube video by Chris Barclay)

Listening with my hands

For nearly five days a continual beehive of activity went on here in Washington as workers assembled all the stone pieces of an unusual circular hive - a completely dry laid structure known as a Clochan.

Towards the end of Friday the final cap stone went on and the work-bee came to a celebratory end on September 18 at the Marenakos 2010 StoneFest.

The drone of the machinery and the hum of the workers who had been busily chipping and shaping and fitting stones faded away and a new sound could be heard, an even sweeter sound than chisels ringing as the many stones were dressed.

The haunting drone of the bagpipes filled the air, as 6 traditionally dressed pipers arrived at the site and began playing for the wallers who had worked so hard on the project and played too for the others who had participated at this year's StoneFest including the letter carvers and the stone sculptors. After playing a couple of tunes, including Amazing Grace near the entrance of the newly constructed clochan, several pipers actually crawled through the small granite-stone opening and began to play inside the clochan.

It had been a special 'hands-on' week which ending appropriately with a special 'hands-on' moment when we gathered around the structure and 'listened' to the drone of the pipers playing inside the beehive, and placing our hands on the outside, many of us could almost feel the stones singing, as the far away sound of bagpipes seeped through the walls.

The sound of hand tools.

We continued building a beehive Clochán Tuesday September 14 at the Marenakos StoneFest near Seattle Washington. Participants worked enthusiastically together adding height and thickness to the dry laid circular structure to the point around 4 pm where there was enough height to begin the corbelling of the roof. Various tasks were shared such as pinning, fitting, building, shaping stones and making hearting. Hear is a short clip of what it looks and sounds like when people get together to build traditional structures of stone in the traditional way - with their hands. "Yeah!"

A Hand for the Arch

Stone carver and friend Colleen Wilson dropped by and took a short video clip of the last part of our dry stone workshop in Metchosin B.C. last Saturday. The two day hands-on course was attended by 12 enthusiastic students (4 women 8 men) with Chris Barclay and myself doing the instructing.

I thought it was an interesting enough clip (showing the removal of the centering) to merit a 'stand-alone' posting on the blog. Normally (and probably this is for the same reason magicians don't like to reveal how they do their tricks) I don't like to show pics of an arch in progress showing the actual form still in place, but this clip captured a lot of the excitement of these workshop 'arch-removal' moments and particularly because this form remained suspended in the opening even after the supports were taken away, and was evidently in no hurry to leave.

Do the 'hands of time' turn as slowly for a rock?

Never mind how long it takes before moss starts to grow on a tree or a rock, think about how long it takes for lichen to grow on a stone! Ages. My hands have got me thinking about this a lot recently. I have a little video for people today. Double Click the link below to see it .
http://vimeo.com/7867746

This Hand is My Hand, This Hand is Your Hand...

Hand to Hand directed by Tamás Wormser of Quebec
A baby’s grasp, a lover’s caress, an athlete’s grip, a dancer’s gesture, a craftsman’s touch: hands shape our world. A sensuous visual odyssey following our ever-moving hands, Hand to Hand is a poetic celebration of our quintessential tool.

Faces of the Hand by Tamas Wormser, National Film Board of Canada

I was delighted to discover this short film 'Hand to Hand' today about, what else, 'hands' which was commissioned by CODE Motion Pictures and posted by the Cultural Olympiad on their Winter Olympics Site. It explores the motion and emotion of the hands.

Though there are no shots of hands gracefully placing stones into any dry stone walls, there is a lot of hand-thinking going on. The whole film is carefully 'handcrafted' to express much of the impressions and ideas that I hope this blog has successfully begun to explore in the last month and a half since I started posting thoughts about Thinking With My Hands.

I am posting the link to this film here today in support of the Canadian Winter Olympics which are now in full swing in Vancouver . It seems fitting too, since today I am flying to Victoria B.C. where I'm sure the Olympic fever is spilling over from la 'main' land.