I am often asked, “How did you ever get interested in doing what you do [asking about my work with stone]?” I give them a simple answer, although the reasons for continuing to work with stone for over forty years are far from simple.

I say, “As a child spending his summers on Kelleys Island, I spent a lot of time wandering around on the beach in front of my grandmother’s house. I know now, but didn’t then, that the island is basically one large chunk of limestone, hard enough to have resisted the erosive power of the glaciers of earlier ice ages. The beach consists of stones, cobbles, pebbles and sand sorted by weight, shape, contour and specific gravity in response to the action of the waves, the ice, and the current. The limestone bedrock has yielded slowly to the waves and to freezing and thawing, as large chunks break off, resulting in drop off shelves, as one enters the water. The chunks that break off are tumbled by wave action, are broken, tumbled and broken again and again. What results is a beach of limestone pieces, rounded but flat, as limestone cleaves most easily along sedimentary layers. 

Anyway… I took up skipping stones. The beach was great for finding good skippers. This involved some searching, some appreciation for the qualities of various potential, just right skippers. I also began to examine the qualities of the other stones. 

One interesting feature was, and is, that every stone had its own spider, the first line of defense against the clouds of insects that daily hatch out of the water, to mate and to penetrate the screens of the houses and gather around the evening lights. Then there were rocks unlike the whitish limestone, which is really ninety-nine point nine percent of the mass of the beach. These were colored stones, most often found at the water’s edge. Their specific gravity is greater than that of the limestone, so the limestone is thrown further by the waves. They are also more resistant, because of their hardness. I collected those I found to be most beautiful. These are the erratics. Later, when I began carving stones I returned to them, thought about why they were the way they were and brought those musings into the language of the work. In college I took a geology class. My interest has not waned.” I tell them.

	Charles Herndon works out of his studios on Kelleys Island in Lake Erie, a sculpture studio built in 1980 and a painting and photography studio built in 2000.   He also has some studio space in Columbus Ohio, where, at the Columbus College of Art and Design, he has taught for the last thirty years.  His work derives, in large part, from his experience of the natural features and processes he has observed on the island.  His sculpture in stone, wood and metal has been a focus for him, as have been painting and photography.  As time has gone on and the hazards linked to sculpture and to teaching in a constantly polluted atmosphere have taken their toll, he has spent an increasing amount of time painting and working on his photographs.
In 2000 he built a gallery on Kelleys Island, a two-story 48x35 foot building.  In 2002 he built another two-story building of the same size.  Over that time he has been developing a sculpture garden in a ten-acre area around the galleries.  The newer of the two galleries contains space dedicated to exhibiting the work of other artists. To learn more about the Kelleys Island Gallery, click here.

	Education Syracuse University    1971-1973    MFA Sculpture The Cleveland Institute of Art    1971   BFA in Sculpture     The George Gund Traveling Scholarship Case Western Reserve University    Cleveland, Ohio 1965-1969     BA cum laude in art history and graduate work in a combined program with    The Cleveland Museum of Art
	Teaching Experience Case Western Reserve University    1971 Syracuse University    1971-1973     Kasama International Exchange Lecture    July, 1995 The Columbus College of Art and Design    1973-present