The Stone Project

Installation 2010/2011

Each panel 9'x 12"

My intent with The Stone Project was to link up, in a physical sense, with artists that I had only been connected to in a virtual sense. I collect stones, and I believe that every stone reflects the place it came from. I pick up stones from my travels because it connects me back to the moment of that trip, that day, that walk. The bulk of the artists involved in this project are people that I only corresponded with through artmeshthe now-defunct social media site where I initially saw their work, email or Facebook. A stone is a great connector since it is light and easy to pack into a letter. The rock is a direct reflection of them and what they send as artists will be telling about their esthetics! A rather mundane item, a stone,  becomes elevated to a symbol of friendship, a symbol of unity and a symbol of someone’s esthetics. 

 

After the rocks were sent to me, I painted panels with a narration of how i viewed them and embedded the rock they sent into each panel.
For the people that I knew well, I had to overcome my emotional attachment and create coolly observed panels of art. For people who I did not know as well, I had to create a new intimacy.

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Next, the artists sent me their own work.  

The artists in the project are: Margret Schopka, Germany; Frantisek Turcsanyi, Slovakia;
Patrick Gonzales, France; Pilár Roldan, Spain; José Freitas-Cruz, Japan; Esther Zitman and
Sjef Van Duin, Netherlands; Elisabeth Eberle, Switzerland; Gabrielle Bates, Australia;
Elly Prestegaard, Norway; Laurie Freed, Hawaii; Sven-Erik Bengtsson and Charlotte Buxbaum, Sweden; Nekoda and Gali-Dana Singer, Israel;
Bianka Guna, Canada; Alberto Oliveira, Brazil; Wieslaw Jarmulowicz, Poland; Robert Stanley, Indiana; Agnes Marton, Luxembourg;
Roberta Weissman Nagy, Croatia; Sahin Özbay, Turkey. In addition, I commissioned American composer James Lyons to compose a piano sonata entitled "Stones Falling Down Like Rain" specifically for this project.

 

The installation took place at Substation 9 part of the South Shore Arts Center, in Hammond, Indiana. Above the artworks a world map connected the country of the artist with their work.  Below their work are my 19 paintings of them. Names high-lighted in red are links to the respective artists' websites.