Sisyphus at Play

As November came to a close there were some great weekends of quiet work and much progress was made towards completion of the second wave crest.












A light snow in early December made getting up and down off the stones a bit tricky but it was pretty and very peaceful along the water and eventually the cold seems to go away. But things are looking pretty good . I figure two more good weekends of work and I'll have the second wavecrest done...

But nature has other plans. A screaming freight train of wind comes barrelling out of the north with sustained winds of 50 mph. Three days of this just piles the surf up and it crushes the beach. I didn't want to go down that weekend for fear of what I'd see. It wasn't likely to be good, and with the end so close. But so it goes. The beach was wiped clean and all that was left was a carpet of pebbles. What logs and debris weren't washed away completely were pushed even farther back from the shore. The storm surge overran the stone wave by 10 feet pushing some logs behind it and sucking out huge chunks of the beach. Inluding a 6 foot stone tower that I had built to store stone and the last 10 feet of the Stonewave. The surf undermined about a 12 foot section and doomed the project. And so once again I'm are at the bottom of the hill faced with a boulder and opportunities. We'll just go from there.

The Waves of Autumn

The beginning of November has been a pleasure. Days in the 50's and the sky is generally blue rather than slate grey. The last two weekends I've been reworking the shape of the first wave and resetting the lower portion of the second wave. I was getting in a couple of hours on both Saturdays and Sundays. As of last Sunday this is what it looked like.

I have been taking stone from the top of the other two waves and the western end to reshape the first wave and the lower portion of the second wave. If the crest of wave one is still there this weekend, I'll start on the crest of wave two. I think if I can get a couple of hours in I can finish off wave two before Thanksgiving. The goal will then be to finish of the third wave before snow locks things up for the winter.
Stone and wood are still being tossed ashore by the lake on the days when there is a little surf. But most days of late have been glass calm. I was coming down off the bluff on Sunday and you could see the bottom of the lake about 40 feet out as if there were no water , it was so clear.

Here is the first crest as of Saturday last, before I had Sunday to finish it off. You can see that the light was pretty clear and clean that afternoon. If I didn't have other obligations, on days like this, I could stay down there and work until dark. It is so calm and peaceful. Even the waves respectfully keep themselves quiet when it is like this.

From the east end looking up the wave this is what it is like now. This whole end was vandalized at the end of summer, but now with little reason to go down to the beach, things will stay undamaged, hopefully.

Thanks for stopping by again "anonymous". I appreciate your comments. I hope you find the upcoming work worth stopping back for...and JA, thanks for the postcard. I hope things are going well, I'll try to get in touch after the end of term rush.

Cycles of Growth and Destruction

Over the last couple of weeks there have been a number of storms that have resulted in a relentless, pounding surf. When you watch the power of the waves smashing the beach it is really quite awe inspiring. Tree trunks three feet in diameter and forty feet long being pushed around like matchsticks. Huge blocks of masonry being tumbled around like styrofoam boulders from a Star Trek set.

The end result has been impressive and depressive. Usually you get a couple of these storms a season, but this Fall we've already had about 4 or 5 and we are not even in November. You've heard of the Edmund Fitzgerald. After each one of these storms I head down to the beach not knowing what to expect. The surf line, which under normal circumstances is 45 feet from the Stonewave has now moved about twenty feet closer. A huge bite having been taken out of the beach in the last couple of storms, so that now when high winds kick up the storm surge goes well past the Stonewave. After the last really big blow, there was actually driftwood on top of a section of the wall four feet high. Some sections of the "Wave" have been undermined by the waves. At this point, I think I can keep it stable, but a couple more big blows could take sections of it down.

Now the good news from all of these storms has been the unbelievable amount of stone that has been bull-dozed ashore. I have spent several hours over the last couple of weekends just collecting and stacking it for later use, like a squirrel gathering acorns. The second to the last photo shows one of the piles I've got ready for use. There are two larger piles as well. I am slowly incorporating some of it into the sculpture and the goal is to get the project reconfigured into the shape that I want before winter locks things up. In the second photo you can see the eastern end of the stonewave and I'm working from there westward resetting the stone to repair vandalism and stone theft as well as to reshape the wave crests to conform to the more aesthetically pleasing sculpture that I had in my head. We'll see how it goes. Waves and weather willing, I hope to be done between the holidays. Then we'll start thinking about a new configuration for 2010.

Asteroid Impact

Down at the beach to do a little work this weekend. The sun came out for the second time this month and the light was beautiful. The beach was raked by some serious surf twice this week leaving behind an abundance of stone and wood, but not much beach. So I spent most of the day stockpiling. While I was working, I heard this loud shrieking in the sky and looked up in time to see an asteroid heading my way. Fortunately I had my camera with me and snapped this shot at the moment of impact. It slammed into the Stonewave with such force that a giant mushroom cloud enveloped the northern hemisphere causing drastic climate change and causing all the dinosaurs to go extinct and the end of the world as we know it....at least that's the way I remember it. Or it could just be a piece of driftwood sitting on the stones. Yeah, I think that's it, now that I look a little closer. Yeah that's it. But it looks a little like an asteroid doesn't it? So hopefully you can understand my confusion.

Just finished this painting. With all of the stuff washing in lately it was on my mind. So I thought I'd play around with it a bit. Hope you like it.

And for the guy who asked about the fossil (I can't remember the name, Hellbrunn or something like that). I found it just like that. Split pretty smoothly along the face and unabashedly showing its golden ratio for all to see.

Stone and Wood-Reconfiguring the Beach

Maybe I spoke too quickly about the lovely months of September and October. It has been raining, windy and cold since I wrote those words of praise. And the next couple of days don't promise much in the way of respite. Early last week we had three days of strong winds sweeping out of the northwest. Waves were stacked up on each other impatiently awaiting their chance to pound the shore.











Whenever that happens the surf line will run up on shore almost to the base of the bluffs and when it's had its way it will leave behind a collar of driftwood and often a ridge of stone as well. The aftermath of this storm was no different. Logs were piled up along our stretch of beach.

Where the Stonewave sits, the wood piled up at its base. The wall withstood the beating with no obvious signs of damage and the stone and lay at its foot as if it wished to join its more ordered kin. In all of the years I've lived here I've only seen one storm deposit this much wood on shore in one fell swoop. Canada must be treeless now. How could this much lumber be afloat in the lake? Why did it choose to come ashore on our beach, homing in like salmon returning to their home streams. Along with the natural flotsam comes the man-made detritus. Plastic bottles and lumber from docks, jetties and boat-launches. But also, some big worked beams. Some weighing a couple of hundred pounds, often with spikes or nails still in them. These pieces of beam must be 50-100 years old by the looks of them...if not older.

These storms can be very destructive and in this case a huge section of beach has been sucked away and another part has been stacked about two or three feet high with stone. For me this is a treasure. I spent Saturday and Sunday just gathering good pieces and stacking them for later use. In the picture above you can see a three foot long piece of irregular stone that washed up. There were probably 15 of these big ones that were pushed ashore and a couple hundred between the 1 and 3 foot range. It's going to be several days of stacking to find homes for this windfall. Several days to clear away the wood for later use as well. So although it hasn't been the most pleasant of Octobers yet, it has provided for a pretty impressive stock of raw materials for the next couple of weeks...if I can only find the time to do it justice.

Equinox on the Beach...almost

So a couple of years ago we had a little equinox party on the beach. Last year we fell foul of the weather gods, but this year we were back in their good graces so the tradition continued (tradition being very loosely interpreted here).

The weather was glorious and the libations were uplifting and there was a pleasant coming and going of people which lasted until sunset. At that point the remaining ten sacrificed the goat, watched summer slip away and then made the long climb back up the bluff to their lives.

I must say that there is nothing quite like spending the day on the shore with its repetitious rush of wave to beach, accompanied by the wind in the leaves, shishing back and forth like calloused hands rubbing together. All this lit by the yellow sun that has lost its white summer intensity and glows instead of shines in a soft blue sky.

Brian brought some fish and we put them out in the water a ways. It was a bit tricky getting them into the bottom of the lake because of all of the stone, and then at the moment we decided to put them in the water, the surf decided to kick up. Although the water was actually warmer than the air, I was a bit offended at the assault. The way the fish were leaping out of the water was made even more appealing by their movements caused by the waves. It was a nice little kinetic effect and in the end well worth the dampening of our parts.

I made a couple of circles while we were there. The stick circle really looked nice in the afternoon light and made an interesting counterpoint to the setting sun. This weekend I will go down and see what is left of the pieces and I may have some time to do a little work.

And when the sunset finally came it was a beauty as several have been of late. And so we mark the end of another summer and enter into Erie's most beautiful months...September and October. In the perfect world they have our September and October every month.

Happy Equinox.

Revisiting Some Old Work

I have not been able to go down to the beach in a while, and when that happens I always get a little jumpy, not getting my fix. I also worry about the vandalism, which always puts me in a dark place. I suppose I should practice a little Buddhist detachment, but that just might be something I won't be able to get to in this incarnation. If the waves swept things clear, I could live with that, but human folly...

This Saturday in the afternoon, weather permitting, there will be a little equinoctial gathering of some of the tribe. Some art types, colleague types, friend types, neighbor types, so if you are in the neighborhood and care to stop by and share a moment, you are welcome. If the lake gods cooperate we'll stay for the sunset.

I was just going through my files and pulled up a few images from the past to post for the selfish purpose of seeing them again....

This is the time of year when any new stone comes as a gift of storms. So additional work on the Stonewave will be minimal for the most part and I'll start working on some smaller temporary pieces and do repairs on the vandalized parts and other touch-up work before the snow flies, at least that is what the sunset usually says around the equinox.

Crazy Things Washing Ashore

So, on the actual day of Labor Day, I couldn't really do much stone work because of the conditions, so in keeping with the Dao of the beach, I spent the evening working with sticks. Of which there is an abundance as of late. Little sticks. Nice little sticks most of them. It's like the Exxon Valdez crashed off the coast carrying a cargo of sticks. So, I went back to the circle idea and tried a couple of variations. I'm getting better at these things and in the end, I liked the way this looked in the raking light of the afternoon sun.

And there was a beautiful sunset to finish the day off, so I guess this counts as a pretty good day to be alive.

And for you recent commenters, thanks for sharing your thoughts.

The New Wave Grows

Well, the Labor Day weekend turned out to be laborious. I spent about 4 hours a day on the beach as the water was calm and clear and the weather warm. Ideal conditions that have occurred only three times this summer. So the Stonewave has grown substantially. This is what it looks like from out on the water a ways. Took a little boat ride courtesy of a beach neighbor. The forms are not exactly what I'm shooting for, but once weather turns I can rework the wave crests to make them closer to what I want. If the elements permit, I might also get the fourth wave crest in before winter.


This is what it looks like from land and at this angle the waves look more like what I want them to look like.


Just since this Fall, the wall has stopped so much sediment from running into the lake that the ground at the back of the wall is now two feet higher than the beach side. The plant life is pretty lush as well.

The view from behind the wall out towards the lake is kind of interesting in the light at this time of the year as the sun barely clears the bluffs to light up the back of the wall.

I like the curve of the front of this wave and the color of stone and vegetation is quite pleasant. Very late summer in feel, if you ask me.

In the last two photos, the late afternoon sun really changes the stones' attitudes and they start to feel quite pleased with themselves, almost to the point where they imagine themselves stonework fit for El Dorado.