Submitted by:
John Shaw-Rimmington
The Stone Foundation is an organization out of the states that you should check out. www.stonefoundation.org Besides organizing a yearly 'Stone Symposium' where presenters from an international array of stone specialists, and artists who work in stone, share their knowledge, Stone Foundation's founder Tomas Lipps also edits a periodical 'Stonexus', a high-quality magazine with some of the best photography and consistently interesting articles found anywhere in print or on the web.
Last year we were asked to come down from Canada to the United States to help teach a course on dry stone walling, one week prior to last year's 2006 Stone Symposium in Hood River, Oregon . Well- known masonry expert from Ireland, Patrick McAfee , Chuck Eblacker from New York, and Dean McLellan and I (from Ontario Canada), were invited by Tomas to join forces to instruct two dozen enthusiasts from all over the world in traditional dry stone walling methods. The students completed a significant section of wall over the 5 days in the lovely country estate of the Stonehedge Gardens. The evenings were spent relaxing and getting to know one another outside on the lovely restaurant patio, while enjoying the wonderful food provided by Stonehedge's proprietors Mike and Shawna Caldwell.
(left to right) Michel Giannessini , Dean McLellan, Patrick McAfee, Chuck Eblacker and John Shaw-Rimmington.
For the weekend of the actual symposium Dean and I had been commissioned to build a dry stone "tree" at the Hood River public library, based on a design of mine that Tomas had seen on the Dry Stone Walling Across Canada website. Many of the people attending the lectures and presentations at the main conference, took time out to join us in this unique building project, as we carefully stacked rings of semi-flat local stone, called tuff stone, (donated by local stone supplier Don Olmstead ) into a 10 foot high cone-shape . We call it the 'Stone-ifferous Tree'. There was an air of celebration as we completed this amazing structure on the third day. Not only does the finished tree look stunning, the actual process of building this permanent feature became a unfolding community 'event' in itself, as people joined together to help out or watch and congregate over those three days in October.
Tomas was asked by a local resident if kids might be tempted to climb it. He scrambled up to the top and said "Of course they would". There are a lot of other "trees" on the library property too, all potentially hazardous and dangerous to anyone who likes to climb. What was mother nature thinking when she made trees, or heavy rocks for that matter ? !
One of the best parts of the symposium was a special stone balancing party, organized by the Stone Foundation at the jetty on the beautiful Columbia River. Various precariously balanced structures were constructed on the beach by many of the individuals who attended the symposium, as the sun set slowly over the mountains. A group of participants crowned the occasion by rallying together to create a delicate corporate stone arch , (without using any permanent form). Each person managed to fit their individual stone together with everyone else's, in a gradually contracting curve of stones, until all the nestled shapes locked together to form a free standing arch. It is this kind of group effort that symbolizes for me, the connectivity there is between the people who come to this wonderful yearly stone event, and emphasizes again the fact that stone continues to be a great unifying 'common denominator'.