Revisiting the Kayak Storage/Parking Area

Back in November 2011 we started an unusual dry stone project that my friend Mikelos had envisioned for some time in order to better use the space on his tiny property more effectively. 

He needed to make an area to park his truck on top of a drop off that ran beside his house AND to store his three 16 foot long kayaks somewhere as well. 

The resulting arched chamber which was completed over several months was not only a success in terms of structure and efficiency of space, it also ended up looking beautiful. 

I revisited with him last week and took these final photos. It looks great now that everything has healed over. 

It reminds me of something I'd come across at the end of some narrow stone steps or arriving through a tiny stone passageway in the picturesque coastal village of Deià in Mallorca 

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Other 'Thinking With My Hands' posts on this project can be found by pressing the links below.

Our chamber's nearly made

More photos of dry stone kayak storage structure.

Tons of Spuds

I'm looking forward to supervising a special Kid's Wall Building Activity, working with the children of parents attending the Dry Stone Walling Festival on Amherst Island this September 25, 26 and 27. We're hoping to build some spud walls, and maybe other weird and wonderful structures out of tons of fresh potatoes.

For more information on the festival go to  2015 Amherst Island Dry Stone Walling Festival

More details about Potato Walling will be posted here on Thinking With My Hands in the next few weeks.

If You Were Mother Nature

If you were Mother Nature what colour would you paint these rocks?

Would you paint them solid colours? Would you try to stay inside the lines?

Maybe a soft pastel might look nice?

Here's what she created.

Wheelchair & Handicap Accessible Art

Photo courtesy of Marion Daniels

Convergence

Today my focus is on the way the stones are fit together in the dry stone retaining walls you often find in places like Mallorca and Majorca.

They are neither coursed nor random, coarse nor overly refined, round nor square, standard nor uncommon, angular or curvy, obvious or particularly obscure…The walls are just different to what most of us wallers in North America are used to.

Sturdy? You could drive a truck over it !

Got a great video from Doug McGraw last week.

He told me in an email earlier this year, inspired by the bridges I'd done in Canada, he was going to be building a bridge somewhere soon in the States.  Well here it is.  

Congratulations Doug.

Hello John,

I’m attaching a time lapse video of our recently completed dry stone bridge.  

Best,

Doug McGraw

Dry Stone Art Takes Off

Dry stone sculpture. A relatively new kind of additive art. Collectively connected visual expression. A collaboration of enthusiasm and aesthetic sensibilities. Bringing order, structure, whimsy, and hopefully good taste together in stone. Sometimes grasping beyond our reach but always creating opportunities to let stones speak. A way of connecting inspiration and form. Revealing the potential inherent in stones held together by simple people using simple physics

Spiral Ascent

This year's art installation at Haliburton School of the Arts was designed for the sculpture forest. It's called Spiral Ascent. The design is a fibonacci spiral tower with three fibo-niches built into the sides.

Dave and Marion built one of the fibbo-niches

Virginia and Jim built another one

This is what the spiral looked like on day one.

This is the spiral at the end of day four.

All sorts of stones still needed.

We needed more than the 12 tons of stones we've already used for the large Fibonacci ramp we're making at the art school, so yesterday morning we made a field trip to the local quarry in Minden Ontario. 

After having worked two days building with this lovely stratified granite the students had a good Idea what to be looking for. 

At the quarry we loaded a lot of hearting in buckets. We also found more of the medium sized pieces we needed. We placed thinner flag size stones in the trailer as well as naturally tapered stones for bedding flat coping stones of our ramp on an angle, as well as tapered voussoir stones for around the arched niches we have incorporated into the design. 

Oh, and we needed some large Liquorice All Sorts too.

Fibonacci on Grade

The students and I are creating an ascending Fibonacci ramped platform thing out of local dry laid stone at the Haliburton School of Art in the Haliburton Highlands in Ontario. Th first day after determining where it should go on site, and how it would be oriented on the slight grade, we pieced together the large chunks and connected a continuous spiral course of layered granite. We added gravel to create the beginning of the ramp. 

This structure is a loose adaption of a piece Eric Landman designed and built recently. 

He kindly gave permission to develop his design further which I plan to do in number of ways including adding dry stone arched niches into the mix. 

Stay tuned for tomorrow's edition of Thinking Spirally With My Hands.

Thinking & Expanding on the Fractal/Hands theme

Golf balls on the beach

At one point on that recent 'Tour of Old Stones' organized by Margot Miller last May, we took a much needed 'rest day' in Dorhoch, on the east coast of Scotland.  

I spent most of the day on the beach with my good friends Linda and Fred. We goofed around balancing stones and making all sorts of whimsical creations with objects we found there like shells, seaweed, driftwood and yes even golf balls. 

Finding the one lone golf ball in the sand gave us the idea to gather all the roundest golfball-like stones we could find to form this undulating stone necklace.  

Looking back now it seemed like the outing was a kind of practice session for an event that I hope to be leading this July on the west beach of Port Hope.   Here is the link with details concerning that workshop.

What Would Andy Do? Temporary Installations Workshop

Wine and Thyme

So many turf-top dry stone walls to build. So little thyme.

Breaking News

We live in a world hungry for breaking news.  A multimillion dollar news industry has been set up to encourage an insatiable appetite in us for anything it can persuade us into thinking is, or will be, a top story. 

People everywhere spend the greater part of the day reading the newspapers, checking Twitter and Facebook and watching TV, looking for 'new ' news. We want to be the first to know about it and we'd like to be the first to tell others too. We put so much pressure on ourselves and social media to come up with interesting stuff. 

Let's face it folks. Some days there's just not much happening!

But then I think to myself, here I am, happily working away on the 'dry stone rock pile', just shaping stones, and I realize that every day is just chock full of  'Breaking News'.  And it's all good. 

Every rock I break and shape is 'new' and useful. Every stone is needed in the creative wall building process and when I'm in the 'stone zone' it is entirely engrossing.

Nothing about building dry stone walls is old. It's all new. And the fresh breaks are part of what makes every day interesting.  

Things Stones Expect you to Know # 17

That perfectly good dry stone walls can be built using 'round' stones too, (not just square ones) and that combining shapes is often more interesting than having endless courses of the same standardized rectangular shape.

Fireworks on the Rocks

A Continuing Tradition.

Each year Dry Stone Walling Across Canada sponsors the annual award for "Dedication to Traditional Stone Masonry Techniques" in its continuing support of the Algonquin College Masonry Heritage Tradition and Techniques Program. 

It seems to me, by avoiding pressure to become 'not for profit', this organization has been far more effective in encouraging up-and-coming masonry students (and walling enthusiasts) not just through award programs but also in the varied hands-on demonstration/training walling events it's held over the past twelve years, as well as providing more professional experience through job opportunities and permanent employment with DSWAC.

At the Algonquin College June convocation the "Dedication to Traditional Stone Masonry Techniques" Award along with a DSWAC Certificate was presented to Dylan Hansen.  

Dylan has been an excellent student at the college and is highly regarded by his peers and masonry instructors.  When Dylan and I spoke on the phone I was encouraged by his eagerness to get all the experience he could in every area of applied stone masonry, especially 'walls without mortar'. I am looking forward to having him come work with us soon.

Zen Portal

                                                     
Let the stones draw you in to their world 

A 360 stereographic panoramic projection of a rocky beach.

2010 Evan Sharboneau and PhotoExtremist.com

Things Stones Expect You to Know #15

That they like quiet.

Structural Integrity

We can learn a lot from a good retaining wall. It has integrity and decorum. It doesn't gossip or badmouth others.  It's all about holding the dirt back.