Devin Devine, a stone mason in Blakeslee, PA
serving surrounding areas including Devon and the Main Line Area
My work was featured in Garden Design Magazine.
Garden Sphere, stacked stone sculpture in Devon, photo by Linda McCarthy
Although the work of Stone Mason and Artist Dan Snow looks quite different from mine, the fact is that I was influenced by his book, in the Company of Stone. I didn’t need to mention him. Lithadelic Stone Work is my thing. But then why hide your influences? I’ve seen ideas get misappropriated before, see my most recent blog post about my stone paths and patios in Collegeville, and I’d rather do the opposite. So in my first big exciting magazine feature, guess what?
I gave credit where it was due:
“Before starting his company in 2007, Devine worked as a mason to pay the bills. After practicing the trade for many years, he began expressing his artistic vision through stone, making hand-crafted spheres, vases, and other garden sculptures. The piece shown here is Devine’s third sphere, a shape he finds particularly alluring. “The sphere is about as universal of a shape as it gets. There’s a primal response to it, some fascination I can’t really describe. I’ve been drawing and painting sphere-shaped objects for years. Now I build them too,” he says.
Devine creates his spheres and other sculptural pieces using dry stacked stone, usually leftover fragments of flagstone that remain after he builds patios and walls. His work was inspired by a similar stone sphere he saw in a book by Dan Snow (of Dan Snow Stoneworks). “It was awesome, and I wondered-how’d he do it? As I gained experience working with stone, I figured out how it was done. At the same time, I figured out how to build stone walls where the stones flowed, like waves, rather than just being stacked level, with each stone woven together in such a way that it can hold itself together,” he explains.”
Artistic Stone Mason based in the Poconos
This kind of craftsmanship is similar to what goes into building flagstone patios and retaining walls in Blakeslee, PA.
Photo: Lithadelic Sphere the Second, built by myself, solo, without any mortar–just stone, in Devon PA, Summer 2013.
I go a bit more into the subjects of originality and influence in this video. Bit of a rant but I called it part one cause really, I could go on, about this subject:
If you’re looking for stone work that lasts, is beautiful get in touch, we can talk.
Thank you
