stonelines

This is the first of several stone line sketches. This one was 100 cobbles in a row with a lone cobble set off to the surf side part way down the line. I lined them up on the edge of the surf and I wanted to watch as the water washed over it and realigned it, but right about the time I finished, the surf died down and the line remained unmolested. Despite the fact that the row of stones wasn't very long it had a lengthier feel to it. The way the light was coming in that morning, hitting the water, it made the organic edge of the surfline seem more substantial and the relationship between the kinetic line of water and the static line of stones was enjoyable to watch. Nature's calligraphy...especially noticeable in the picture second from the top....Thanks for stopping by Jonathan S.

Scales on a Circular Fish

This is the second of the stone disc pieces. It took about an hour or two to get the right kind of stones and put them together. If I remember correctly, the disc was about five feet in diameter. I like the photo with the water in the background. The small strip of grey-blue at the top offset against the darker band of sand and gravel and then the disc in the foreground feel very right. This disc didn't last very long before somebody took it apart and then the surf reclaimed the pieces. I wish that I could be down there to see the water deconstruct one of these things, but it always seems that the big storm surges are always at night...patience, I suppose.

Sidetracking for a moment

I just wanted to see what this looked like. When I'm not playing around on the beach I'm a painter. This is one of the pieces that is a keystone piece of an exhibition entitled "Requiem for the Peten". This is the first major work of the series based on time spent in Guatemala at the Classic Period Maya site of Tikal between the years 1993 or so and 2007. There is also a close-up of one part of it. This is an ongoing project that consists of at least 70 individual pieces. Part of it is currently being exhibited in a small gallery in Erie called Glassgrower's.

Genesis II

So in the Fall the tower starts to take this undulating form as an accidental response to the previous collapse. It gets up to about 11 feet tall and has some nice curves. At that point I was pretty much done with this project, but I kept finding these great slabs of stone so I started to build a little tail on the end of it. It kept growing, but then a storm washed the tail away. I restarted the tail just as a way to store the stone over the winter and as the season for going in the lake came to a close I had this tall wall sloping off of the tower about ten feet long and about 6 feet tall at the lowest point. I had planned on using this stone for a different project, but that is not what ended up happening.

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.

Here is a close-up of a stick sculpture that was about 2 feet high, about 7 feet in diameter and constructed by laying the sticks out in a radial pattern from the center. The outer edge was defined by a "rim" of thicker sticks with the spokes layered over top of one rim, another rim placed on top and a second level of spokes. This lasted about two weeks and then somebody set it on fire one night. The photo above shows the first level of spokes and rim.

In response to Bob...yes I've known of AG for a long time, particularly liked the Time and Tide CD. I had been doing little beach pieces for years and when I started to see Goldsworthy's work it just made me want to work larger and eventually I began these bigger pieces about 4 or 5 years ago. I really enjoy the tactile quality of most of his stuff.

sketches in sand-stone-sticks

Here is another little project from last month. I'm pretty busy right now with a show that just opened last Friday, but I plan on organizing this thing a little bit as soon as I get some spare time. This is about a 16 inch square hole lined with little pieces of driftwood sticks and surrounded by some flat stones. Last Saturday I was able to get into the water for the first time this year. Its only about 45 degrees, but it was calm and I went in up to my knees with little or no screaming. There were several good slabs right along the shore.