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My mother took these pictures of me when I was getting stone out of the woods in Hastings County, Ontario. The stone looks pale green in its raw state (or brown with dirt on it), but polishes up to a lustrous black.
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These were the stones I chose for Teaching and Learning in their original state.
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After the first cuts were made in the stone, you can now see the shape of the figures emerging.
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Now the sculpture is really taking shape.
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This is now ready for the final stage - sanding and polishing, which takes me a little more than 1/3 of the total time to complete a scuplture.
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This was the stone I used for 35 Years of Dancing. I first cut the stone in half, then carved each bear separately. The bears in the finished sculpture seem to fit perfectly, one's snout slightly above the other's, perhaps because they were made from one stone to begin with.
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Greeting Turtle started out as this bit of stone. One corner of the stone was raised while most of it was fairly flat on the bottom, so that became the waving leg.
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These are Past is Present in the initial stages. I first cut the rough part off the large Thetford Mines stone, then cut a thin slice off about half way through the flat edge, then the entire piece that would be the background for the sculpture.
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I can't work inside my home because of the dust produced while carving stone, so I work outside in any weather. This is a picture of my plastic-covered "work shop" on a rainy October night while working on Thirty-five Years of Dancing. You can see the bears in progress lying on top of my toolbox.
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I took this picture after I made the first cut for Natural Balance. It was the first time I had used my round tungsten carbide blade on my hacksaw, which allows me to cut curved lines, thus saving some time and quite a bit of stone. I used only the piece on the left, cutting it in two through the middle vertically for the two figures. The stone on the right will be used for a future carving.
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