Conversations with Stone             

About this project:

Since 2019 I have been making regular visits to Portland to carve in stone with the invaluable help and support of Hannah Sofaer and Paul Crabtree at Portland Sculpture and Quarry Trust. My recent engagements with stone carving (specifically in Portland) revisit a moment in 1990 when, as a 1st year Fine Art undergraduate, I made my first visit, as part of university field trip. At this time, aged 19, I refused to try stone carving, choosing instead to make assemblages from found materials at Church-Ope Cove. 29 years later, I returned to make up for the lost carving opportunity. Significantly, my 21st century carving experiences consider my original encounter with the island and Portland stone through an auto-ethnographic lens. I utilise the experience of carving at the site of the stone’s origin, to determine a form. I have noticed that my sculptures sit at a meeting point between direct and indirect referents, hinting at multiple possible identifiable forms. For example: I am interested in the ‘equipment’ of the maritime and quarrying industry, the origins of the materials and processes that formed the stone, the fossilised and evolved forms of marine micro-organisms and the varied relationships between these to the development of a personal process of carving. In this way, my sculptures have become symbiotes of varied reference points and also of a critically reflective relationship to the act of carving. My methodology has continued to extend through repeated visits to Portland during which I have become familiar with the tools and processes of carving, engaged with the stone as a material, and learned about the landscape, heritage and ecology of the island including its contemporary industrial role in the global mineral and extraction industries.