Between Silence and Light
Between Silence and Light had a twofold purpose: to learn stone carving as a new strand of my practice, and to create a series of four carved slate standing stones, each exceeding two metres in height.
The project drew a line of continuity between the present and the deep past, referencing the nearby ancient Swinside stone circle (also known as Sunken Kirk), the coastal path, and the surrounding community. By linking contemporary art with the presence of ancient stone circles, the work enhanced their context and significance - the new stones and the old circle held in dialogue with one another.
The stones were conceived as monumental but also narrative: each site-specific, carved with imagery and text drawn from its particular location. To learn the craft, I invited professional stone sculptors Shawn Williams, and later Danny Clahane, to teach me carving over several months - guiding my own work and carving the stones I designed alongside me. Stone was an entirely new medium for me, and working in it added a conceptual weight to the process that fed directly back into my broader practice. Alongside the carving, the project continued my ongoing commitment to bridging art and science — collecting water and using a microscope to observe diatoms and other microorganisms, and developing workshops that invited the local community to make their own work.
Out of this strand came a series of small carvings centred on diatoms, whose intricate structures lend themselves naturally to sculptural form. These pieces were inspired by SEM images from Dr Tiffany's diatom collection — a continuation of the same impulse that runs through the rest of the work: rendering the invisible visible.
A diatom Lime stone and gold leaf sculpture based on diatom
Didymosphenia geminata
A diatom stone sculpture inspired bythe Biddulphia anetdiluviana
Dr Tiffany collection: Biddulphia anetdiluviana
Between Silence and Light illustrated document