Why Stone?

At on form, we believe that stone sculpture deserves a place of its own. Time sets stone apart. It has taken hundreds – in some cases thousands – of millions of years to form, and many painstaking months to carve. All of our artists are passionate about stone. Here, some of them say why:

Emily Young

“The stones seem to exist in an utterly different way to us, so slow, so silent and so long-lived; but to me, they’re kinds of ancestors. They are made (like us) of particles that were born in starbursts, in galactic winds, in that first big bang… These angels, warriors and poets who people the stone are born of sunny, windy hill tops, and the dark light of caves; a kind of ecstasy, a stillness, a remembered energy from childhood, from dreams of fish memory, from dreams of flying and the silence of stone.”

Peter Randall-Page

“When you’re moving across the surface of stone, it’s akin to moving through a landscape; it’s like walking; your body is kept busy – in quite a rhythmic way. It’s a combination of the randomness of the found stone, and the geometry I’m applying to it ‘ the geometry has to adapt to the vagaries of the stone. It’s never perfect geometry ‘ rather than copying nature, I’m trying to understand the processes at work in nature, between geometry and randomness, and produce something that has an organic feel to it. Carving, like drawing and modeling, is conducive to a meditative process where decision, action, and appraisal become fused in a fluid working dialogue. In short, the act of carving itself helps me to access my imagination.”

Emma Maiden

“The boys from the quarry bring stone on a pick-up and slide it down a plank to the ground. Left alone, I square up to it armed with a saw and mallet, knowing I’ll have to rough out the shape in situ before I can lift it onto the carving banker. Even though I’ve worked with stone for ten years the clean sides and sheer weight of a fresh block still daunt me and it feels like a battle of wills as I tilt, prop, saw and hammer, holding in my head an image that feels airy and faraway in the face of this dead weight at my feet. But later, once the stone’s up on the banker and shards are flying from my chisel, the relationship suddenly shifts: the form is beginning to show and there’s a new rapport. Lines and curves from my drawings, based on the things I love – Romanesque reliefs, pre-Columbian figures, Inuit carvings – insinuate themselves into the stone, which in turn reveals its mineral veins, shells and tiny fossils.”

Anthony Turner

“It’s the subtle, slow emanation of potent durable themes which run through the lives of generation after generation, contained in rock that may have lain as seabed for hundreds of millions of years, made of the skeletons of ancient little creatures bound up in the black ashes blasted from volcanoes, squashed by sliding mountains, quarried by humorous Irishmen, drilled and chipped and filed and polished by a dusty Devon man driven by thoughts of beauty.”

David Worthington

“Man as an animal has an innate attraction to stone as it forms the building blocks of his entire world. Therefore the attraction is neither aspirational nor romantic but derives from unconscious impulses to return to the place from which the body came.”

Paul Vanstone

(on his favourite stone, the Indian rainforest green)

“It’s like the underneath of a leaf pattern. It’s like you’re working on something which is still alive. It’s full of red veins and full of life. And it just allows you to run wild.”

Jon Edgar

“Direct carvings rely on the irretrievable removal of material from a block. Ideas and forms change throughout the development of each piece. Working only with hand tools allows time for less conscious ideas to emerge.”

Which stone?

Swaledale fossil, Ancaster weatherbed, salterwath, Cornish polyphant, Plumpton red Lazonby – those are just some of the names of the English stones used by the artists at on form. You will also find work in the Irish Kilkenny, the Portuguese Estramoze and the Indian Rainforest Green. They read like a poem, and so do the names of the tools used to carve them: pitch, punch, point and riffler.

Some definitions

Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of calcium carbonate. Pure limestones are white or almost white, but impurities like clay, iron oxide or organic remains account for an array of different colours. It is often full of fossils. Carboniferous limestone, like Kilkenny, contains a lot of carbon; ferruginous limestone, like Hornton, contains more iron.

Marble has metamorphosed further, recrystallising the original rock. The temperatures and pressures necessary to form marble usually destroy any fossils and sedimentary textures. Pure white marble is the result of metamorphosos of very pure limestones. The characteristic swirls and veins of many colored marble varieties are usually due to various mineral impurities.

Sandstone is formed from cemented grains that may be fragments of a pre-existing rock. Granite is crystallised molten magma. Granites are usually a white or buff color and are medium to coarse grained. Granites can be pink to dark gray or even black, depending on their chemistry.

For further information about stone sculpture, see the About Stone website. http://aboutstone.org