The Art of Balance

Gardening is a long game and sometimes I lack the patience to see it through. I’m surrounded by neighbors who are true gardners which can be overwhelming when I’m attempting any off-road idea, which is often.The thing about gardening for me is the digging. It seems I strike “gold” everytime I put my shovel in the earth. I love finding the rocks. Sometimes they are wedged in the clay soil so tightly that I feel I’m uncovering a buried secret. Several years ago, I had turned our swell (big ditch) into a dry creek. This project required several trips to the rock quarry so I could get Kiwani flats, or river boulders, or Delaware pond pebbles to add to my collection. I loved the sound of the rocks hitting each other. I loved the texture, weight and patterns that seemed unique to each rock.

During the summer of 2020 I started stacking rocks in a conscious way. Living through the worst of the pandemic affected everyone differently. I found great comfort in my backyard and not in art which was surprising and frustrating for me. I found I just wanted to noodle around with these pieces of earth to see what came forth. I pulled out the skipping stones I had secreted in my suitcase from Seattle and stacked them. I found the river stones from the James River cottage we visited when the boys were babies and took them outside and balanced them around our firepit. I unboxed the small little pebbles I picked up while enjoying a Mount Rainier sunset and stacked them on a windowsill. I stacked over and over again the stones I found in my backyard, creating a different structure each and every time. All of these collections became intricate stacks of memories, carefully balanced altars, linking me back to the places and people I most loved. I discovered how some of the heaviest stones could only be balanced on the smallest of pebbles. I also learned to trust my hands rather than my eyes to build the structures, adjusting the balance. These stacks or cairns or talismans…whatever a person likes to call them…consumed my days, reminding and teaching me so many things. Eventually I got back to creating art, inspired by my stacks. I fondly think of this body of work as my cosmic pandemic connection series ;) but in public settings it’s called my altar series.