Limestone, three on Mohs scale, is mainly calcium carbonate from the detritus of sea life, deposited on sea beds.  It can be chiseled and ground.  I generally approach it first with a diamond, hardness 10, saw.  I cut parallel lines into the surface at a depth equal to the space between the lines.  I then use an air hammer to knock out the material between the saw cuts.  I keep going in this way until close to the desired shape, at which point I begin cross hatching shallow saw cuts without using the hammer.  I then proceed with grinders and sometimes riffler files.  I use rifflers on Indiana limestone more often than on the Columbus, or Kelleys Island, limestone because the small fossil elements that make up that stone are cemented together less well.  The rifflers become dull much more quickly on the Kelleys Island stone.  One could think of the Indiana stone as being softer, although its elements are equally hard.  Water passes through it more quickly.  The refining of the surface is done with abrasive bricks, pieces of silicon carbide hones or grinding wheels.  I begin with coarse bricks and continue with finer and finer ones as the surface becomes smoother.  The polishing process continues with paper in ascending grits, up to 2000 grit from 40.  All of this refining and finishing takes place with water running across the surface to lubricate the cutting action of the abrasives and to wash away the “dust”.  Paradoxically, the entire polishing process involves putting ever more numerous, smaller and smaller cuts into the stone. The surface is then closed over by final buffing and polishing.  I seal the limestone with silicones and wax.

Marble, finds its origin in limestone but is metamorphosed through heat, pressure and time to become a material that is more or less crystalline.  The spaces in between the particles in limestone are filled up by crystal growth in marble.  Water does not pass through it.  As it is made of the same stuff as limestone, it also three on the hardness scale.   But is much more difficult to work.  I often have to sharpen my diamond saws on sandstone because the blades glaze over when they are being used on the marble.  The quartz particles in the sandstone are hard enough to free the cutting faces of the diamonds from their metal matrix.  I use the same techniques to carve the marble as I do on the limestone although I often use small diamond files.  The Vermont marble crystals are sugary; Georgian marble has much larger crystals, like rock salt.  The Vermont marble is easier to carve.  The crystals in Georgian marble permit the eye to enter the stone.

The erratics that I carve are granitic and have often undergone some metamorphism.  Gneisses mix in with more homogenous areas of crystal growth.  Stone from earlier eras is swallowed up or engulfed by subsequent magma movement.  One part of the stone sometimes forms way before another…  Generally the stones come from the basement rocks of the Laurentian Mountains.  They formed deep beneath the surface, then, as the overlying stone was eroded away and the weight of the crust became lighter, the basement levels were exposed to the surface.  The glaciers then delivered them up to me.  The time and the journey have an effect on the surfaces, which are slightly different chemically, often, from the interior of the stones.  Generally the stones are made up of feldspar, hardness 6, and quartz, hardness 7.  The darker stones have more metal in them and have come from deeper beneath the surface than the lighter stones.  As the stones are harder than steel, which has a hardness of 5.5, steel tools simply crush against the surface.  Tungsten carbide tips work on stone but would fracture if they were overly sharp.  For years I used a bushing head (it looks a little like a meat tenderizer) on an air hammer to work down the surfaces of the stones.  The surface crystals would eventually fracture and fall away under the repeated blows of the hammer against the bushing head.  Over the last couple of decades the cost of industrial diamonds has gone down far enough that most of the heavy lifting in material removal from the stone is accomplished now with the diamond blades.  I use the same parallel cut process I described when discussing the limestone.  As the material is so much harder, the finishing process takes much, much longer.  I think its worth it, however, to use the harder stones because of the history they have had, which can be read in them, and because of their inherently lasting qualities.

Stones

As I walk the beach near my studio and look down at the stones I’ve crossed time and again over my life. I find in them what I am prepared to find. As my preparation has improved through education and experience, what the beach offers becomes richer. I see in the stones before me and under me, and in those I take from the beach to carve, the manifestation of history, geology, process and time. At the same time I associate with the shapes, colors, patterns and relationships I see my own history and involvement with art making, my experience of life and the world around me. Each walk is different. I am unprepared for the unexpected, the surprising, for the minor epiphanies that this meditative process offers. These are the rewards of the walk.

In my work I begin with what I know, and then enter into it to discover what I do not know, could not have imagined without the experience gained in the engagement.

In one group of paintings I focus on the beach. I imagine I am painting, as I paint, as the rocks forming, as the weather and the water giving shape to them and revealing the pattern and the color of their early history. I make marks that are analogous to what I see in the stones. The marks are modified by what I know, or think I know, about the geological processes involved in their genesis. Sometimes I consider the marks in the light of art history and choose modes of representation or painting language that seem to fit the individual stones. My mood is often determined by weather and sometimes by season. I am depressed by the dark days and energized by the days of bright sunshine. The quality of the light in the paintings is related to that nexus.

My photographs document and celebrate what I have selected to focus on: Kelleys Island, the stones, the water, the land, the vegetation, and the effects of weather and ice. Through this concentration I attempt to define my sense of place and belonging, our time within the context of geological time.