Maybe it comes from experience, or maybe it is innate, but I do have a nose for stone. Time and again I stumble upon obscure sources of loose stone if I just start wandering around. The talent, if it can be called that, extends to moments during the walling day when a particularly sized and shaped stone is required for a spot on the wall. Without it being in sight, I will ferret into a stock pile to immediately come up with the hidden gem, waiting just below the surface.
Read MoreIf the rock scramble and stone sculpture I recently constructed for East End Park in Woodstock, Vermont looks a little like it could have been the result of coincidental events visited on the landscape, then I’ve succeeded in realizing my dream for it.
Read MoreArt is the neutral, but fertile ground that tolerance grows in. By letting our true nature play itself out through the imagination, maybe we can do ourselves some good and do less harm to the place we call home. We can breathe easy, and allow Earth to do likewise.
Read MoreShelburne and Rokeby, along with other regional museums that focus on bygone days, are reaching out to artists for inspiration as they plan for meeting the future interests and needs of museum visitors. Collaborations, such as the two I recently took part in, give me hope that small, locally supported museums, like those that raised my awareness as a kid about the world around me, will continue to thrive. Their welcoming openness to new ideas is commendable.
Read MoreFantasy Topography rose up out of the forest floor last April. It became an object of intrigue for some of the visitors who wandered off the beaten path that circles the museum grounds. The pine tree glade has now returned to its former life as a quiet, shady glen. With all that passes, ours is the choice to hold in memory or let slip away.
Read MoreThis year, Rokeby Museum announced the launch of a new partnership with Kasini House designed to engage contemporary artists as interpreters of the museum’s unique history. Ric Kasini Kadour, Curator and Project Director of Contemporary Art at Rokeby Museum, invited the artist team of Dan Snow Stoneworks (Elin and Dan) to a series of workshops and discussions designed to foster the integration of history and contemporary art into an artist’s practice. We joined ten other artists from around the U.S. and Canada at the museum last month for four days of thought-provoking research and an exercise in project development.
Read MoreMovement is critical for getting into the moment, for being of a time and in a place. Perhaps the best thing an artist can offer a viewer is the chance to become a little more aware of themselves. Outdoor art spaces hold the potential for that to happen.
A recent special event at the Shelburne Museum drew a large crowd on a perfect summer evening. I was there to welcome visitors to Fantasy Topography, my temporary, environmental art installation in a pine grove on the grounds. It was great to see lots of people walking around and in the sculpture. Many thanks to those who stopped by to chat, and to the staff for all they do to make an enjoyable time for those attending the museum’s once-a-month, Free Friday.
Read MoreTo be in touch and in tune with nature has a centering effect on us. Couple the outdoors with a creative pursuit, and engagement with both is enriched because together they sharpen and heighten our spatial orientation. My environmental art piece Fantasy Topography seeks to bring pleasure to the core.
Read MoreThe studio has been filling up with rocky toppers this winter. The half-products are elements in a sculpture to be installed as part of a new outdoor exhibition at Shelburne Museum. The uniquely shaped objects will be arranged atop berms of loose stone. The completed piece will sprawl across the floor of a pine forest, flowing between and around the tree trunks.
Read MoreBasically, wallers are spare-parts jobbers. The loose pieces of indigenous stone they collect and parcel out are really nothing more than the duft of earth’s crowning mantle. In rare cases, bedrock, stone’s “birthmother”, is present on a building site and can come into play as a defining element of a dry stone design.
Read MoreNavigating the process of a public art proposal feels like a long walk by flashlight through a snowstorm. Signs are unclear and paths become obscure along the way. Because the destination is not a geographically fixed point, there remain, at the conclusion of an artist’s unsuccessful bid to win a competition, questions about where they traveled, and why the trip dead-ended.
Read MoreClay sketches are the instruments of communication I use to express ideas. The truthfulness of any idea is uncovered by thinking and working it through using three-dimensional materials. With clay, a concept forms through the fingers. Questions about a design come up in the activity of applying clay that might not otherwise be addressed until a project is underway. Solving problems in small scale is more easily done than at the full scale of a construction site.
Read MoreThe 2017 work year was a variety-pack of projects and travels bringing rocks and people together. Projects from 2017 now lie nestled in snow, while projects for 2018 are already underway.
Read MoreEnvironmental artworks in the public domain can quickly fall into the realm of personal legend. One of the best qualities of art in the outdoors is its ability to be endlessly personalized. Each new viewer makes it their own and every return visitor reestablishes their claim to it.
Read MoreA week on Sørvær in Northern Norway kept me immersed in the land and enveloped by the sea. The atmosphere of this island among islands is reigned by the sky above and waters below. Combined, they create an undeniably powerful influence. My moods changed at the whim of the weather. Even though I’ve spent my adult life working outdoors I’m unconditioned to the reality of light reflected from a vast and shifting water surface, or, tides streaming in and out all around. Grasping the totality of the archipelago's grand and sweeping vistas was a heady experience.
Read MoreA recent artist residency at AARK in Finland’s western archipelago allowed me the freedom to make something from nothing. There were no tools at hand and none of the materials I’ve grown accustomed to for making artworks. The islands were swept clean of loose stone by the last ice age, leaving a landscape of bedrock, worn smooth. Enough soil caught in low pockets to start the growth of the forest that now thrives there. It was in that birch and evergreen forest that I found my moss muse.
Read MoreWhat could be a more direct expression of form than molding earth in one’s hands? While the modes of earth shaping may vary, the impulse is ages old and remains strong as ever. My personal choice for satisfying the desire for hands-on interpretation of the earthly elements is the manipulation and configuration of loose stone. Within that narrow frame a wide variety of creative endeavors can be manifest.
Read MoreA fourth generation of the Key family has begun to ramble Winhall Hollow. Pond and stream, woods and fields, are the wider setting for their active home and garden life. Into the mix comes long-time friend and dry stone specialist, Dan Snow. He has constructed numerous stone features on the grounds around their house and barns. Stone from the property has been used to fashion steps, patios, retaining walls and fences. Robin Key’s landscape design has seamlessly woven a contemporary aesthetic into the historic fabric of the Hollow.
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