ichthyosaur wall
Some designs are very intentional and precise, while others are a vague notion with no clear imagined destination, where the stones end up telling the story. This was the latter. Don wanted to surprise his wife, Lise, for her birthday. His request: let’s build something weird in the garden. We started by digging up the large, usage stones that were buried on the property, discovering an old barn foundation in the process. We started construction with a rough shape in mind–if the project were a line graph and this were stats class, its profile would resemble an asymmetrical distribution. Pretty soon, the shape of a large animal started to materialize. I first thought it was a humpback whale coming up for a breath. But as we finished the build, Don put the last stone in. This stone, which had been sitting nearly exactly where it was finally set, resembled the skull of an ichthyosaur, and it wasn’t until we rolled it ninety degrees into place that we noticed it. It was a plot twist, it was weird, and we all loved it, especially Lise, who now has an accidental dinosaur as a backdrop for her low garden bed.
Location: Moretown, VT
Materials Used: local green slate and quartz blobs