The stones know all

I have this recurrent dream where our most ancient ancestors – the stones — are washed up on the shores of time marking the beginning of the Phanerozoic Eon (visible life) that extends from 543 million years ago to this very moment.

A long link in time of multiple stepping stones, one could say. From that first beginning a dimly discernible path heralds in the greening of the land and, ultimately, leads up to the most recent sub-classification of evolution — the Cenozoic Period — and humans.

Yesterday I was down on the cliff looking out over the water towards the sandstone Triassic cliffs that were created 252-200 MYA (million years ago). The Windgrove side of Roaring Beach, however, is made up of dolerite cliffs from the Jurassic Period (200-142MYA) that immediately followed the Triassic Period.

Just before a massive wall of rain completely drenched myself and the camera, the “recurrent dream” became a daytime reality and, peering through the blur of water, I sensed and profoundly felt the creative forces of evolutionary time shaping existence.

But how to translate this into a sculpture?

In my “open-to-the-weather” studio for the past thirteen months, I have been slowly evolving and shaping Deep Time where twenty “actual” Dolerite stones from Roaring Beach are embedded into a “symbolic” Triassic layer of sandstone carved from a single piece of huon pine wood. The idea is to portray the sequence of time where the Triassic gave birth to the Jurassic coupled with the individual Jurassic/dolerite stones giving birth to smaller stones within them. In effect, one continuous if very slow evolutionary birthing process.

A technical aside is that numbered pieces of cut fabric have been placed in each depression to protect the wood from the stones until the stones’ bottoms have been polished. They also act as a sun block so the wood depressions won’t darken under the sun’s ultraviolet rays like the rest of the exposed wood. Once the rocks are all in place, the fabric won’t be needed.

I’m only up to 320 grit sand paper and have a few more weeks work left to do. In the end, though, like all artists I certainly hope the aesthetics of the Deep Time sculpture will make people stop and gasp at its intricacies and beauty.

More importantly, though, I hope the sculpture will make an impact on people’s understanding of how this earth was formed and how many millions of years went into the making of its many stages; especially, the making of the two footed animals that are now causing so much havoc on it.

It’s all about respecting your elders. And the stones are certainly among our oldest elders.