UPDATE check out my most recent sphere, December 2022: HERE

 

State College Pennsylvania, April the 23rd

My last “building a dry stone sphere” post was fun to write, and popular too. So I thought I’d write another one–just for you! The present article shall document the construction of my third and thirdly-most dry stone sphere garden sculpture, which was born in April of the year twenty and fifteen.

Related content: dry stone spheres

Preparing to build the dry stone sphere garden sculpture

So the first thing that I did was plot and plan; dozens of concept drawings were drafted up, helping me to decide on which layout I wanted to go with. Where should my green/grey stones wave? How wavy should those waves be? Circular stones mixed into the flow? Eye-shaped stones? Do I want to bring in any colors besides just green/grey and purple? Serious questions to consider!

So April first: the day had come. It’s become a tradition for me, that I start my first major paid gig of the year on April first. For the first few months of the year, I’ll do consultation work. I’ll do a home and garden show, do some minor repair jobs. Maybe work on a sculpture or two for my own enjoyment–but the first landscape installation of the year starts on April Fools day. That amuses me.

And old man winter of course decided to make a fool of me and attempt to thwart my well-laid plans, by sending snow and ice the night before. Undaunted, I set out on my path, despite the icy windshield…. okay, well, I set down my gravel road, with a rather icy windshield, then I sat parked at the end of the road for a few minutes while the windshield defrosted. I’m not a maniac.

My newest sculpture. I call this piece whole in the ground. Pretty deep, right?

It’s a work of ephemeral art. Soon it will transform into a foundation. Keep reading!

So to start things off, I dug a hole in the ground. I dug ten inches down, compacted the sub-grade and laid down filter fabric.I use a spun material, nothing woven or plastic, but a filter fabric more like what you’d use for a french drain. The felt-like stuff. Now I used to use filter fabric underneath everything, all my patios and walls and stuff. The idea is to spread out the weight. even weight distribution then, spreading out the load a bit. Anyway, I still use the stuff on some projects and this here was one of them.

I call this one Gravel Foundation number 500-something

Laid some gravel then tamped. Laid some more, and tamped it too. And voila– the foundation for a dry stone sphere garden sculpture.

You can see that I placed all the excavated soil unto a tarp. That’s because I want to try and keep the yard as nice as possible. I’ll be damaging this lawn plenty, just by standing and working and being there in one small area for so long, and by laying out my stones, leaving stones laid out for days–yeah, this lawn is going to get beat up, so I’ll try and minimize the damage.

I call this piece the Ghost of Perfection

First stone on the ground is going to be one solid piece. And I’ll spend a good bit of time, carving it by hand, too. Might have been quicker to cut it with a saw. Would have been more perfectly circular too. But it’s better this way.

Hey, let’s take a break from all that reading, and watch a short video:

Building the dry stone sphere garden sculpture

And the sphere construction has begun! Now, I must be perfectly honest–this is not actually a “dry” stone sphere sculpture that I am showing you. The customer requested that some sort of adhesive, some cement or other bonding agent be used. They cited a concern for youthful vandalism. Since this sphere was going to be just under four feet tall, I had to admit that it would be vulnerable to such an attack, if it was stacked dry.

The other dry stone sphere that I wrote an article about actually was truly dry stone, with zero cement, zero glue, no tricks. That one was a) much bigger. It would take more effort to mess that one up. And b) tucked away in a secret garden, it is in a much less public spot.

This new dry stone sphere garden sculpture was built using all of the same methods as my other, actually dry stone spheres. Same methods as I use on dry stone walls and sculptures, but with the addition of a bit of well hidden glue and/or cement.

Glue (and/or cement) is not the only thing I concealed within the sphere…

I also wrote prayers and poems and enclosed them within the sculpture. Along with pieces of quartz. Prayers for humanity and for the state of our world, mostly. Helps to keep me focused, for one thing, while I’m working on a challenging task. And these dry stone, or stacked stone spheres are kind of challenging. The risk of collapse is there, especially at the half-way point. And getting the flow just right, is not something that I take very lightly. This type of project does involve a bit of play…but overall it really is not so much whimsical or spontaneous, but rather thoughtful and calculated. Also, I rather like bringing in a bit of a sense of the sacred, into my work. This is spiritual work for me. I must stay humble and behave as an impeccable warrior. Who knows, the gods might not let me get away with it otherwise.

INTERMISSION

Okay, so this wall from the previous year was a bit whimsical, in comparison. Not really planned, I just went and had fun with it. About half-way through building the sphere, I returned to this hardscape to do a quick repair. The wall was fine. Problem was a couple of the patio stones were crumbling! My client never mentioned that, but when I stopped by for some photos I noticed it….the stone in question was some green stone that I had never used before, and had placed within the patio for added color. You can see a little bit of the green stone in the photo, bottom left. Anyway, I replaced the crumbling green stone with some green stones that I had which I knew to be durable and winter-hardy.

 

 

 

I keep a pop-up canopy handy, to work underneath in case of rain.

Now I almost finished on Earth Day, how cool would that have been?

Finishing a sculpture of a swirling ball of rock, on that very same holiday which celebrates a swirling ball of rock. (Our good planet Earth, she’s a swirling ball of rock too) But no, for some reason it did not quite pan out that way, and I had to go home after work, a day or so before Earth Day. State College is a three hour ride from where I live in the Poconos, so I stayed in state college for four or five days in a row each week, coming home for a couple days in between. Similar to a regular work week.

 

So the day after earth day I loaded up the truck and set back on my trail, ready to finish up. Wouldn’t you know it? April 23rd, and it snowed (just a little bit) on my way to work that day!

But how’s this for a good omen? Driving to work, I spotted a double rainbow! It was present in the sky for a good half-hour of my drive.

dry stone sphere garden sculpture–complete

Since I was building the garden sculpture in my client’s front yard, I got to meet a few curious and friendly neighbors. These three dogs, and their human, were happy faces for me to see, many of the days on this project. The dogs wanted to come by and be the first to pose with the sphere, immediately after I finished it.

Featured in the spirit of stone, coffee table/design resource book by Jan Johnsen

The wire-bit on top was only temporary. It was never finished and currently the sphere sits without any wire atop. On a future sphere, maybe I’ll elaborate on that concept a bit.