May the Fourth be with you

May the Fourth be with you.

She’s in my heart of course, forever.

In 2007 I took a minor leap: quit my job and invested everything I had, including that heart of mine, into a new adventure– one that I called Devine Escapes.

I’d been working for a series of hardscape contractors, stone masons and builders, for years.

In the beginning of my career (1997), I’d keep a notebook in my pocket, I’d jot down ideas for songs and stories when no one was looking. But by 2002 that notebook was full of ideas for things I’d one day build…

I’d say to an employer hey, we got this big mound of soil you’re just going to get rid of…..you know, I could sculpt something cool out of that.

One time, when I was supposed to be building a patio I discovered a beautiful bit of moss. We were going to excavate it and get rid of that moss.

With that moss I did sculpt a face with a somewhat scraggily beard. Dude–that moss looked just like me. At age 29 ish.

No one at the company I was working for appreciated it. Can you believe–perhaps I was even laughed at. Probably i was told to get back to work. Well, fine.

Starting my own business a year or so after that moss face–doing masonry to pay the bills. But what could I do creatively with this medium–what could I do that’d never been done before. What can I do that is from the heart, and entirely me?

…..and on my days off, in my back yard….and on that abandoned highway in Birdsboro…you know the one?

But I had them bills to pay…..so I kept building walls. I got a bit better at them, too. And I started building them without mortar. Patios and steps too. People would pass my job sites and accuse me of being at artist–just because the wall I was working on looked good. Some people make balancing into an art but I was didn’t get that into it, to me my approach to balance was more a meditation, and it didn’t hold my interest for that long. And the walls being art….well IDK, the walls I was doing at that time weren’t that interesting really. My art was in them notebooks.

But how could I combine all these elements–the rock stacking, the stone masonry, and the ideas from my drawings and writings—> the answer came while I was exhibiting my walling and flagstone work at a home and garden show in 2010.

I called that answer Lithadelia and Lithadelic. It was never about finding an easy way out. Sometimes it was even a path of most resistance, of maximum effort. Take the path that has the most heart. I would suffer for years for what I love, if need be. IDK, other artists tell me they just do what’s fun….that’s good for me some of the time, but I got blood sweat and tears to shed for this.

Photos: my first major Public Commission, at Brookside Gardens, part of the Maryland State Parks, in Silver Spring MD, Completed days after Autumn Solstice 2017.

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