But is it green?

14th June 2010

The other day I was talking to somebody about on form, and enthusing, as I tend to, about the aeons of tiny sea creatures, volcanic explosions, sedimentation and erosion, and how the history of the material means that stone sculpture slows us down and reconnects us to the landscape, and he just looked at me and said “I’d rather just go and climb a mountain.” Well, there is that. I am constantly struggling to reduce my carbon footprint, so what am I doing, I wonder, encouraging the quarrying of stone, the flights to Italy and India to buy it, the great big lorries that bring it here and take it away again? Shouldn’t the stone just stay in the ground? It’s where you just have to hope that the pursuit of beauty and meaning justifies a certain amount of disruption. We’re not dead. We’re breathing. So we’d better carry on creating. At least, I argue rather lamely, these artists work in open-sided barns, quite often with hand tools, and not in the giant heated studios of Bratart. And this stuff does, after all, slow people down.