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Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Cairns And A Collection Of Stones

I am a collector of stuff for sure and I’m working at getting rid of some of it; however, there is one collection that I’m thinking can’t go away but can be used somehow.  I collect stones.  Why?  Who knows why but I have bowls filled with stones, bags filled with stones and jars filled with stones.  Some are a certain kind of stone like these chocolate rocks from a beach in Fennville.


Others are just random stones.  Some I’ve written a date and place on but most are just stones I’ve picked up on the beach.
Every summer during my art retreat at Spider Lake I build tiny cairns on the dock.  One summer I lined them up on the open stairway.  I have a photo but who knows where that is.
A couple days ago I came across Tonia Jenny’s website.  She too is a collector of stones and she had a little workshop on painting them.  I checked it out and here are two little 4x6 watercolors that I did, one yesterday morning and another this morning based on what she taught.  

How fun was that and as she said… very meditative.  I think I’ll do a few more.
A little history of Cairns (pronounced sort of like Karen but it’s a very quick en.)  I always thought of them as a stack of balanced stones much like I’ve painted; however, according to Webster and some photos I’ve found it’s actually:
a pile of stones that marks a place (such as the place where someone is buried or a battle took place) or that shows the direction of a trail”  There is an interesting article in Glass Magazine that tells the history of cairns and shows images of some that are different than what we think of as cairns today.  Here’s a link if you’re interested, GlassMagazine.
And now back to sorting clutter but first... so much to be thankful for and I hope all of you have a nice Thanksgiving Day.


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