Genesis I

I'm going to backtrack a bit. A while back I was taught how to use a Blog and I thought in the end it would be forgotten, die of attrition, but I have decided to keep it alive as an exercise and see if it serves any useful purpose, perhaps take on a life of its own. The previous entries have been in relation to a series of sculptural projects I have been working with on a beach on the south shore of Lake Erie, not far from Presque Isle in Erie Pennsylvania. So I will put that into context first.

Beginning about five years ago or so I would hang out on the beach near my home. I don't like just lying there so I would go to read or putter around and I started making little stone works on the beach and they would be washed away the next day. Around that time I started to become familiar with the work of Andy Goldsworthy. Like other artists who played around with "environmental" art I was impressed with his work (I liked a lot of R. Smithson's work...Anna Mendieta-great stuff). After seeing some of Goldsworthy's larger stone "seeds" I thought I would try something on a larger scale. The first big piece I did was actually on a beach in the Grand Canyon. I enjoyed myself so much that when I returned home and the weather changed from spring to summer I decided I would start a work on the beach by my home. This photo is a view from the beach that was to become my workspace for these projects. The first attempt was acairn of about 11 feet tall that survived the winter locked in an ice dune, but was destroyed in the Spring by a storm. I began a second one moved back a bit from the surfline, but it went down that Fall. The third attempt was a 10 foot conical tower with a wall jutting out of one side. A Spring storm took it, but I began a fourth one almost immmediately from the wreckage of this tower and although an early stage of it was wiped out the base survived and the current "Stonewave" grew out of it. Next time, I'll go from there.