headers
abknight | 1 Feb 2007 04:39
Favicon

Show and Tell


Confronted by this
http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/816/3234/1600/536346/stoneSculpture.jpg

I thought to look for more Chinese miniature carving and
found a Chinese investment banker who likes to carve
bgvhttp://www.youbk.com/mychop/Index.asp

Then I found this lurid description of carving stone types:
http://www.cnarts.net/eweb/knowarts/stone/SSstone/

The stones are apparently not quarried but found along
river beds and in fields.  Soapstone is mentioned, also
kaolinite.   Carving is done as the existing shape and
color layers in the stone suggest and allow.

Earlier I found myself interested in Jene Highstein, the
first fully credentialled downtown New York intellectual I
 have run across whose first choice of medium is stone. 
In the '70s he hung with Richard Serra, Phillip Glass,
Richard Nonas, Laurie Anderson, Gordon Matta-Clark.  He
was a member of Matta-Clarks Anarchi-tecture movement.  He
is collected by modern and contempory museum throughout
the US and Europe.  He is not the type to have his own
web-site and finding his work is challenging.  But he has
a big trail on the Internet coming in for over 14,000
citations.  He is known as a Minimalist.  A google image
is the best way to start.  I may put up a Fotki album of
some of his work that was much harder to ferret out,
including a meter high carving in quartzite.  His slice
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 2 comments |
headers
Norman Watts | 1 Feb 2007 12:01
Picon
Favicon

Re: Show and Tell

Thank you Bill. What great flit around the world before settling down  
to shaping sentences.
Permalink | Reply | 1 comment |
headers
abknight | 1 Feb 2007 15:30
Favicon

Re: Show and Tell

You're certainly welcome Norman.  I thought of you and
your great standing stone when I saw Jene Hightstein's
vertically sawn liths at the Walker.  Did you find a good
close-up of that?

I'm still checking out the shoushan carving site hosted by
John, who I now gather is not a carver but a collector.  I
think one would have to be a great capitolist to collect
these "chops", or stamps, as I read a raw stone of the
highest quality this size of a fist goes for up to
$10,000.  John calls this stone monazite, a mineral
conaining rare earth elements and often radioactive
thorium and uranium.  Of all things a nobel prize winning
American scientist has written a poem about this mineral

AN UNUSUAL STATE OF MATTER
In the beach sands of Kerala,
abraded from the gneiss,
in the stream sands of North Carolina
one finds monazite, the solitary
mineral. In its crystalline beginning
there was order, there was a lattice.
And the atoms - cerium, lanthanum,
thorium, yttrium, phosphate - danced
round their predestined sites,
tethered by the massless springs
of electrostatics
and by their neighbors' bulk.
They vibrated,
and sang
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
blank | 3 Feb 2007 08:07
Favicon

New/updated in the Stone Sculpture Virtual Library

8 links added or updated in the Stone Sculpture Virtual Library this week.
The full list is on http://aboutstone.org/vl/recent/

1. Slipper, Paul
    http://paulslipper.ca/
    I am a Vancouver based stone sculptor. I have been a full time
    professional artist since graduating from Emily Carr School of Art
    in 1983. Having sold and shown internationally, my work has
    received numerous awards throughout North America and beyond.  ...
    Location: Canada (Vancouver).
        Updated 02-Feb-2007 by paul slipper.

2. Salt, Donn
    http://www.donnsalt.com/
    Experiments by trial and error carving NZ Jade 1967 resulted in the
    first piece being sold in 1968 and instigated a life time
    exploration of sculpting hard stone media. Donn's unique, creative
    New Zealand jade carving and sculpture are recognised world wi ...
    Location: New Zealand (Northland).
        Updated 30-Jan-2007 by Donn Salt.

3. Helerman, Bat-Ami
    http://www.bat-ami.net/
    Bat-Ami Herelman is an Israeli artist which works primarily in
    Stone. To her, the stone is a feminine sensuous substance despite
    its virile image. It appears hard but gentleness and tenderness can
    be extracted from it. The stone is female; it is the earth's, ...
    Location: Israel (Kfar Shmaryahu).
        Updated 30-Jan-2007 by Bat Ami Helerman.
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
jake berglund | 3 Feb 2007 17:18
Picon

Jerusalem finishing. sandblasting

Howdy.
I am currently working a job fabricating hot tub coping out of Jerusalem
stone.
This has proven to be more complex than was anticipated at the start.
I figured I would share a bit of what I had discovered.

We acquired our stone in 2' x 3' x 1.5" slabs from O&G. It runs about $100 a
piece, after tax.
One flat side was saw cut, the other was a honed finish.
Jerusalem is a limestone, a sedimentary type of a light cream color. It has
fossil deposits interspersed throughout. It also has dry cracks running
every which way, and there is no regular cleavage. It has some quartz
deposits. Each piece of stone varies in hardness within the piece. Cutting
and grinding on an inconsistently hard surface is more difficult, as the
stone has a tendency to gouge and get pits.

The customer wanted a bullnose around both the inside and outside edges,
with a rustic finish, keeping a 'natural' look after fabrication. This is
where the job became interesting, as we usually accomplish rustic edges with
a thermal finish. Many kinds of stone can be thermaled. Bluestone, many
other kinds of limestones, some granites, and even an occasional(though not
generally) quartzite. This particular lot of Jerusalem limestone could not
take a thermal finish. It disintegrated and/or burned upon contact with the
oxyacetylene flame. So we decided to sandblast it.

None of the fellows in my company have had any prior experience with
sandblasting. So this was a new experience for all of us. We did have the
advice of one fellow- Darren; whom we knew from Stone Depot, we had made
pretty good friends with him when we were redoing the showroom there.
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 6 comments |
headers
gary grossman | 3 Feb 2007 19:08

Re: Jerusalem finishing. sandblasting

Jake, that was a great post.  I'm not sure that I'll ever sandblast 
anything but that was a really fun and informative post!  Keep em 
coming. cheers, g

--

-- 
Gary D. Grossman

G. Grossman Fine Art
http://www.negia.net/~grossman

Distinguished Research Professor - Animal Ecology
Warnell School of Forestry & Natural Resources
University of Georgia
Athens, GA, USA 30602

http://www.arches.uga.edu/~grossman

Board of Editors - Animal Biodiversity and Conservation
Editorial Board - Freshwater Biology
Editorial Board - Ecology Freshwater Fish
Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Simon | 3 Feb 2007 23:40

Re: Jerusalem finishing. sandblasting

> I am currently working a job fabricating hot tub coping out of Jerusalem
> stone.
> The customer wanted a bullnose around both the inside and outside edges,
> with a rustic finish, keeping a 'natural' look after fabrication. 

Jake, thanks for the informative post. 

Varying the blast media will also achieve different effects.

Have you tried using hydrochloric acid to get a rustic finish on limestone?

Simon
Permalink | Reply | 4 comments |
headers
jake berglund | 4 Feb 2007 00:00
Picon

Re: Jerusalem finishing. sandblasting

On 2/3/07, Simon <simon@...> wrote:
>
>
> Have you tried using hydrochloric acid to get a rustic finish on
> limestone?
>
No, can't say I have used any chemicals to alter the look or texture of
stone.  Though I must say, this subject is one of the reasons why I joined
this list. Whenever searching anything specific about working stone, this
list gets a hit in the top ten.
For instance googling: stone finishing hydrochloric acid
results in this at the top of the list:
http://aboutstone.org/conversa/arc002/msg00267.html
So big props to the people here. Which I am proud to be one. Even as a n00b.

I have an understanding of several products used to keep stone from aging or
weathering, but none with 'aging' them. Chemical agents for finishing is one
of the subjects that _really_ interests me, as we get quite a few requests
to make new installations look old. Customers don't like to hear that they
'should just wait a hundred years'. heh. Doesn't stop me from saying it
though :)

Warm Regards,
Jake

--

-- 
-->  http://metasyntactic.com  <--
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 3 comments |
headers
Musgrove, Richard (PIRSA - SARDI | 5 Feb 2007 00:01
Picon
Picon

Re: Jerusalem finishing. sandblasting

Hi Simon and Jake,
Just leave it under a gum tree! I recently did a limestone piece for a
friend who placed it on a stump under eucalyptus tree with thick
chocolate-coloured bark (don't ask me the species - I'm a zoologist not
a botanist!). Gums doing what gums do, we had a rain and brown steaks
appeared on the piece. Within a few weeks of this had mellowed to give
it a very interesting aged appearance. I had the same experience with a
piece in my garden - leant against the same species of gum. Both were
sealed so we'll see if this lasts. Might try it with an un-sealed block
next time.

Cheers,

Richard =20

-----Original Message-----
From: jake berglund [mailto:jakeberglund@...]=20
Sent: Sunday, 4 February 2007 9:30 AM
To: stone@...
Subject: [stone] Re: Jerusalem finishing. sandblasting

On 2/3/07, Simon <simon@...> wrote:
>
>
> Have you tried using hydrochloric acid to get a rustic finish on=20
> limestone?
>
No, can't say I have used any chemicals to alter the look or texture of
stone.  Though I must say, this subject is one of the reasons why I
joined this list. Whenever searching anything specific about working
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 1 comment |
headers
Norman Watts | 5 Feb 2007 13:02
Picon
Favicon

Re: Jerusalem finishing. sandblasting

Talking about sandblasting and chemical surfacing of stone. Is there  
a poor man's way to achieve a "frosted" surface on a stone like  
basalt similar to the effect achieved on polished granite with  
robotic laser transfer of photographs?

n
Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |

Gmane