Ebb and Flow - Part 2

I actually worked on these in situ, so‎, in this place. And you know carving granite is not easy. They're one of the hardest stones on this planet. And it's not necessarily fun. And so I have to use diamond grinders. So it's basically a diamond disc on a grinder. But the whole process of having a respirator and eye protection and goggles and hearing protection and all this dust in the air and you know it's not, you're sort of isolating yourself from the whole process for protection. 

And the process of carving the stone is very much intuitive. It's, in a way, a collaboration. So it's like I am working with the stone. And I think that one of the things that informs it is that idea of touch, that idea of connection in that you can feel the rocks. And every single line, if you look closely at the lines and, you know, I would encourage you to like put your hand run along one of the lines and see how it moves around the rock itself and see how it moves up and down and comes around and ebbs and flows. 

My work has changed in this year in the sense of while before I never really considered this idea of leaving my mark. With Covid, you know, I started to wonder about actually those ideas of mark making, which is part of the artistic practice. I think that we all want to leave our mark, we all want to have a measure of existence beyond ourselves. We exist on a very on a very fleeting basis on this planet. And you know there is a reason that I use heavy hard materials that require a lot of labour. And part of that is that I feel it has an honesty to the materials where I'm basically working hard to talk hard to hard objects. But also it's a way to keep that conversation long lasting, not in the sense that the conversation continues but that the conversation is recognized beyond myself.