concrete pouring party!

Yay! Concrete pouring work-parties are fun. A few friends and three hours during a lovely summer morning ... and the pillars are poured and the granite set.

L to R:   Deanna Pindell, Grace Brown, Rich Haag, Paul Haag, Michael Haag

Everybody's favorite paparazzi: Becky Hannum, the interim Program Director at the McColl Center.

ambassadors of dreams

 






Ambassadors to another world, a place of dreams and hopeful joy. These five form a cycle, a system, a swirling network of entangled relationships. None of these species, who make their home in and around our little pond, can survive without the well-being of the others. Mockingbird and minnow; bumblebee and duckweed; the willow oak.

The images above are the stencils I have made to represent these species. The stencils were given to the stone engravers, who carved them into the stone, along with the common names for each.

Catawba River connections

Last weekend, we had a work-party, and my assistant Michael brought along his father, Rich Haag. (As well as his brother, Paul Haag and friend Grace Brown).  As it turns out, Rich is very involved with the Catawba RiverViews and we found a good synergy between our projects and passions for the rivers of this watershed.

Catawba RiverViews is a community newsletter focused on the River district, particularly environmental and sustainability issues.

Here is Rich's well-written short article about this project, with some great photos!

Catawba River Views: Downtown Charlotte art will help to clean the Catawba

Catawba River advocate Rich Haag

Stones and bones

This last four weeks has been a flurry of design and site preparations. My assistant, Micheal Haag, went with me to a stoneyard. In the back we found the boneyard ... the broken scraps and odd and ends, available for cheap as long as we were willing to dig through the muddy piles of rocks!

We gathered up a nice collection of granite pieces, clearly leftovers from kitchen countertops. Back to the studio for design!

Which font to use? Which creatures to represent? Which words, how to place them on each stone? 

A tracing of each stone allows me to test ideas and designs. Two copies of this map are needed: one to go to the fabricators who will engrave the stones,  and one set for me to use on the site while I design and prepare the placements of each piece.