repatriating the stones

The last day in Alfred. I took the numbered stones left over from the exhibition and put them back where I had found them. When the snow melts in spring, I hope that walkers will find them, under the melted snow.

number stories

There were a group of 4 visitors to the exhibition today who lay for two hours amongst the stones looking for numbers pertinent to their lives.

7,000 stones opening

Visitors to my exhibition opening choosing which of the 7,000 numbered stones they want to take home.

7,000 Stones

thanksgiving is an important American holiday

Over thanksgiving I photographed 7,000 numbered stones individually. It took three days.

a gentle sign

One of the things I love most about being here is that it is possible to see an beautiful and forlorn empty sign by the roadside, pointing at nothing, go in and talk to the amazingly friendly people who work in the shop (on the counter is a sign "free hugs") and arrange to borrow it from them for a week. They will bring it on the back of their truck for my exhibition opening in December. The sign has a space where you can write text using removable plastic letters. I will write 7,000 STONES on it.

They told me that the local kids come at night and steal the plastic letters from the sign. A boy was recently killed in the village and the kids come and take the letters that spell out his name.

7,000 stones (four)

Stones no. 1744 - no. 1891

Labelled, unnumbered stones

7,000 stones (three)

There are dangerous water snakes who live under big flat stones in this creek but I didn't realise until after I had collected many big flat stones. I didn't see any snakes.

7,000 stones (two)

The woman who lived in the next house came out and asked us what we were doing in an angry tone. I said we were collecting stones. She went back indoors.

We collected 446 tonight in the headlights of the car.

7,000 stones (one)

The story of the Steinheim is of a complete human cycle of the effort to understand the world through the collecting, naming and organisation of things. Objects were removed from their context, collected together and displayed.

And then the process unravelled backwards, the artefacts were taken, lost, sold and stolen - dispersing back into the world. But now they carry with them the remnants of a new chapter in their history. An obsolete catalogue number is evidence of their having been part of a collection and having once stood in for some part of our history, as an example of Eskimo hunting tools, or early Chinese footwear.

The building was also a collection. It was made with 7,000 stones collected by hand from within a three mile radius of Alfred by President Allen, his wife and the students of the university. In order he said, to demonstrate the diversity of the earth on which we stand.

I'm thinking of making a sculpture that follows this process. I am going to collect and number 7,000 stones from within three miles of my studio. I will show the pile in an exhibition at the end of my residency and will encourage people to take stones away with them so that the collection, in the same manner as the Steinheim collection, disperses back into the homes and attics of local people.