Birth of a Notion – May/June 2006

Once in a while I’ll draw a plan for a sculpture and get excited and say, “This is it – just do it!” But the stone has its own realities. The mass and weight and stoniness of the stone ask me to relate to it directly and draw on the stone, to cut it and feel it and look at it as it changes. However, drawing on paper is fun and it gives me a good excuse to sit down and drink a cup of coffee and listen to music on a cold day.

Drawing allows me to make broad and rapid explorations of ideas without much time or stone or diamonds spent. Drawing answers some questions and poses new ones so that in the heat of the direct carving game, when the diamonds or chisels touch the stone quickly and forever, I can be more fluid.

Here are a drawings that work around the question of how light moves through a column of stone. These drawings led to the creation of Mountain and Sky, respond to it and spin off into new territory.

As Leonardo Da Vinci once wrote to a friend, “May your pen be bold and fly where none has flown before.”

Editor: Tom’s ‘Mountain and Sky’ (pictured above with his daughter, Fiona Rose Small) is currently part of the GraniteWorks show at the Marenakos Seattle Stonearium. The show will continue through June 15, 2006.