The first edition of The Word project. One word, a world that forms in my head.
This time, the word is stone. My mind quickly takes me to the marble I have advised so often. But just as quickly, I realise my mind wants to go somewhere else. Somewhere older.
Stone. Oteiza comes to mind first. His raw sculptures, the way he pulled figures from stone. Moore too. That relationship with raw stone, unfinished, honest, art before it becomes anything useful.
Each stone carries its cosmic history. Stardust, compressed over millions of years into something I can hold in my hand, and then use to create again. Stone is the one material we can find in the same state out there in the cosmos.
There is something deeply humbling about that. Sacred. And also strangely close, because, as Mikel Laboa sings, we are stardust too.
Stone is not alive. But it weathers, it ages, it carries memory. And in that way it is imperfect, just like we are.
Image credits: Oteiza sculpture © Antton Elizegi / bertan.gipuzkoakultura.net Henry Moore, Mother and Child © The Henry Moore Foundation / henry-moore.org Saloua Raouda Choucair, sculpture via Studio Nicholson / studionicholson.com Moon craters, 1937 vintage celestial print via Etsy Flysch © Ayala G Studio / ayalagstudio.com Remaining images via Pinterest, original sources unknown