The Magical Stones

 

 

"What is art anyway?"

 

A vexed question. Are my stones in bad taste? Do they ridicule tradition and religion?

 

My stones feature positive symbols & inscriptions pertaining to history and various religious/spiritual beliefs, as well as allusions to such.

 

The use of horror quotes on one stone alludes to the Romantics, from whom Gothic horror developed. They feared that a world built firmly on the principle of reason excluded so much, creating an overly materialistic society that limited imagination, creativity and spirituality.

 

Those proto-chemists, the alchemists - alluded to on the stone "C?" - wanted, through transmutation, to witness the transformation of matter, effectively experiencing the divine directly.

 

On the next stone, the 'Geordie' spelling of "LANGWIJ" (language) allies itself to history in the way the elements affect the local landscape, which, when linked with the industries of the north-east region (largely working class ones, limiting general vocabulary somewhat on average) creates the distinct 'Geordie' regional dialect - language reflecting history and nature; reflecting place.

 

On this same stone is another link to a shared history: a heart, bound by chains, above which fire - the cleansing agent (to strip away the material aspect) - rises upwards connecting the spirit with the Godhead, as shown by the fore-grounding of a Christian cross above the heart. This symbolism denotes the central tenet of Christianity: spiritual rebirth; life ever after.

 

Allied to the Christian symbolism and word "LANGWIJ" is the allusion to, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." An old idea that language is as close to reality as we can get (hence the use of a reclaimed stone on which to represent it); that, in essence, language IS our reality and that an original usage of such brings us closer to that which is just out of reach.

 

This is what fine art aims to do, to alter consciousness either temporarily or permanently.

 

And if you develop language, you're being pro-creative - procreating; potentially allowing an aspect of yourself to live on after death.

 

The writer of Watchmen, Alan Moore, rates language as our finest technology.

 

From this premise I'd argue that a fine use of language therefore develops us as human beings.

 

It's evolution in action.

 

The title stone sees a midnight blue night-like background with the title engraved in gold coloured lettering; gold: the colour of the sun - day, contrasted against night; the idea that reason can shine through even during the darkest of times.

 

The vase features letters, alpha and omega, from the Greek alphabet.

 

The Greeks were the first true flower of western civilisation, their architectural style copied throughout our major cities, with Newcastle featuring perhaps the finest neo-classical street in Europe in Grey Street.

 

Gardens are traditionally conflicts between nature and time in that seasons change and so does the garden and as the owner ages and passes away nothing remains as it once was.

 

In my garden, however, there is no traditional life as such, it's all composed of man-made or quarried materials where - and this is where I turn the pretension up to eleven - the only thing living... are ideas.

 

As any writer of fiction could relate, written characters eventually start to lead rather than follow the writers demands, taking on a curious life of their own, refusing to be shoe-horned into plots contrary to their nature.

 

And is any human idea more powerful than that of God?

 

Ideas are made from atoms, just like you or I.

 

Atoms may dissipate over time to be replaced by other atoms, but the central idea remains the same, ie: human beings are constantly shedding the atoms of cells and growing new ones to take their place, but even though we're eventually completely new we still feel like the old us, no-one spots any joins, we just sense continuance.

 

And whilst we can physically die, a good idea doesn't (picture a loved dead relative in your mind).

 

In my garden the 'immaterial' ideas live alongside the material objects, as well as emanating outwards.

 

If ideas can potentially live forever, is this then a triumph over death?

 

A strange Garden of Eden indeed!

 

It was the Greek philosopher-scientists (science, originally being a branch of philosophy, just like religion) Leucippus and his pupil Democritus who initially conceived of atoms, which brings me back, long-windedly, to the start of this digression and ‘alpha and omega’, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet and all that lies between - the universe/God... where all that limits our horizons is lack of imagination/technology/language.

 

The obelisk was initially a pagan symbol worshipping the Egyptian sun god Ra, which Christians then co-opted, over-layering their belief in the (sun) Son of God - the old religions being just like those of the new age: cherry-picking favourite bits of the old to fit their supposedly more developed worldview.

 

Here in the north-east we inhabit borderlands - between the edge of the old empire and what lies beyond; between subjective notions of civilised and barbarian; between the rational and irrational; between townie and country; between England and Scotland; between one idea and the imposition of another - where, for example, rock from a pagan Roman wall was taken to build many a church whereupon it was over-layered and consecrated with Christian will.

 

The Star of David half-included upon each of the vase and obelisk is linked to Judaism, the religion of Jesus, who inspired Christianity. And in St. Peters Square, Vatican City, at the centre of the Catholic world: a (formerly pagan) giant red obelisk.

 

These symbolic borderlands hinting at (perhaps) an underlying unconscious (as well as psycho-geographic) burial of aspects of our true nature, folded within time; perhaps a false duality within each of us, seen, from outside of time - the fifth dimension - (as 'Supergods' author Grant Morrison posits) as an unfolded block universe worm stretching back towards it’s mother and, in turn, the mother towards their mother and, eventually, back back towards the birth of all life on earth; an unbroken link between all the supposedly separate diverging idea-forms.

 

This unity, this God(?) then stretches back still further, further… further... an undying multi-tentacled, multiple-worlds’ cosmic tree whose trunk rests in the root of all language, the origin of imagination: the singularity.

 

The symbolic masculine/feminine interconnection of the Star of David represents this idea of a monist universe; quite at odds with how we daily perceive it where co-operation and competition are frequently seen as separate incompatible traits.

 

Are my stones "mocking"?

 

Satire has a long tradition in this country, and with my front garden being a

3-dimensional comic strip - a dark-humoured cartoon - it links back to Hogarth, Gilray, and onetime resident of this (Gateshead) borough Daniel Defoe... right up to VIZ and beyond.

 

My garden's no more a real graveyard than a movie set yet, just like certain movie sets, permanent.

 

Now I’d argue that the typical garden street scene is a by-product of people conditioned into behaving as insecure interchangeable cogs forced to operate in an insane economic system where front gardens become masks with their owners and creators desperate not to be 'outed' as belonging to any other tribe than the majority – something of a throwback to the original primitive tribe of extended family, but now living together in greater numbers and therefore not as family, but as un-family, requiring masks so as to largely hide any true differences, cowardly pleading, “please don’t hurt me, I'm just like you!”

 

In this landscape, genuine individuality is frequently perceived as threatening.

 

Is this as far as we’ve evolved?

 

My discordant gardening answer... is that it's time to do something about this.

 

I have. I've quite literally altered the world around me.

 

By surrounding myself with positive symbols I'm attempting to improve my life, 'killing off' the old me and affecting a spiritual rebirth, right here, right now.

 

Now that’s what I call magic.