During March, 2014, for three weeks, my partner Michael and I built

"In Good Time"

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In February of of 2012, Dean Chameides and I started to talk over designs for sculpture. Many designs in the beginning were sleek and groovy to match its backdrop of the new glass and steel building. He wanted a sculpture that would create a place in space, a statement piece that spoke to his attraction of the sophistication found in primitive stone architecture.

A paradox. 

Glass is stone, sand, just in a different form. - Dean William L. Chameides

We agreed to this sculpture "In Good Time" which is a design inherently my own and equally a spokesman for harnessing sustainability through its welcoming flow. This undulating wall will rise and fall as it dances up and down and underground as it wraps trees and dives under sidewalks.  Its location is immediately in view of the 2nd floor gallery, and crosses an implied arched walkway. The sculpture will be surrounded by chestnut trees which the school has developed as disease resistant.  

We are hoping to engage students and professors alike to come sit and stay a while among the stones and leaves...


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Tornado warnings held us back a bit, rain in the beginning made the site a mud pit, despite it all

 
 

forward progress continued and new friendships also grew.

Since this sculpture sits on a public campus with no guard to make sure enthusiastic passers-by refrain from climbing, this has been built with a mortared arch (most of the arches I build are free standing).

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In the glass of the Nicholas School of the Environment "In Good Time" will be reflected. Inside the building on the second floor is a gallery, the staff of which I've formed a team with. My aim is to bring the positive shape of the arch's opening inside as a permanent installation so that one can line up with the whole thing from either inside or outside: instead of seeing through the sculpture, one solid form could be experienced. 

Just a few more tons to go....

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Gaining!

Crossing our fingers and toes, hoping to avoid the predicted snow

Half-way through the materials and half-way through the allotted time. 

Follow the project from another angle here, thanks to participants from Duke!

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Mike - Thanks so much for dancing with me in the mud!

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Images courtesy Nicholas School of the Environment staff pictures, 2014

Images courtesy Nicholas School of the Environment staff pictures, 2014

"The craft-versus-art debate is one that has echoed over time. All art certainly requires craftsmanship. But when is craft art?..."  

Click to read Bill Chameides full post Stonemasonry: Environmental Art as Struggle to Perfect the Imperfect 


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Her arch will be greeting me every morning...The piece itself will inspire all us neighbors for a long time. But what I found even more inspiring was the spectacle of Thea and Michael building the wall and the response it elicited from everyone who saw it happening. They worked hard and long lifting and shaping stones...

I've been marveling lately at how deep the conflict is between Industry and environmental protection... I think Thea's arch represents both beauty and a clear, useful vision of industry FOR the environment. The vision is archetypal: humans lifting and moving stone with their hands. To me it says, here is what we can do if we work hard, and carefully, and together.

- Alison Adcock, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Core Faculty, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience

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