SWCAMBORNE

Here are a few photos of a beautiful Zen garden Nurit took me to see in San Francisco.  I wanted to walk along the waterfront but Nurit insisted that we go down along Market Street.  Suddenly tucked in between two high rises was this garden with flowing water and rough cut granite.

my beautiful guide 

one of several water falls

My favorite 

This photo shows a cannon gin:

Lifting circa 1864

This photo shows a boulder gin:

Lifting circa 2007

Things don’t change much.

The Men of Stone just finished a three stone installation in Arcadia.  It is in the front yard of Howard R’s house and looks terrific.

This was our best installation to date.  It was completed in one day, we solved the basin lip problem and “The Doctor” did all of the mechanical engineering.

Howard was in charge of the logistics I did the design and supervision and two day laborers did all of the heavy lifting.

The Men of Stone

We will be making three more installations this summer.  The sound of running water in the front garden is a great pleasure.  It is economical to run, low maintenance, artistic, and attracts birds.  Life is good.

Lew Watanabe is who I want to be when I grow up.

He is a reknowned stone artist, has published a book and is also a really nice person.

His installations are beautiful and he does fountains.

This bench weighs about three tons and is magnificent.

All of these pieces were on display at the LA County Arboretum in Arcadia at the annual Garden Show. Lew who is a friend of Ed Clare my electrician told me about the display and I braved the crowds last Sunday and went down to see his work and talk to him. What an inspiration. I bought a copy of his book “Master of Stone and Light” on Amazon.

This is a picture of Agassiz rock in Yosemite Valley taken from an article in the WSJ.  It is off the Four Mile Trail from the valley to Glacier Point and stands about 30 feet tall.  Contrary to reports and expectations it is still standing but the brush and trees have grown up aroud it so that the views are not the same as the picute above taken in 1978.  What struck me was Agassiz Rock’s remarkable resemblence to my garden fountain:

“Art imitates nature.”

On Thursday the Men of Stone took three new rocks to Ventura to be drilled.

We used some new equipment, a rented engine hoist, to move the stones this time and it went as well as any stone event we have had.

Maneuvering the big one.

At Art City in Ventura they have much better equipment:

Stone #6

Stone #7

Stone #8 (a beautiful pink stone)

This is picture of the new fountain that we just installed:

We have about five more in various stages of completion.  The question is:  What will people pay for them?

This is a web site for a gallery that sells stone art for prices from $16,000 to $22,000:

Bentley Gallery

Our pictures are not as nice as theirs and we aren’t represented by a gallery yet but we will fix that and then…$$$.

This picture shows the stone just after it was installed and as the basin was being filled.

The learning process of The Men of Stone has been excellent. I expect that in about another five years we will be quite good at this.