The Avant Garden

It has claimed too much of my time lately. I have a bum ankle and a flu, some sort of pollen reaction, etc. Rocks and I have found each other, of course, though not with the frequency nor intensity one associates with these halcyonic mosquito-free days of Spring.  Still too tired to play outdoors, I am updating the site today with the collection I put together as Dave's Faves, Vol. I while a gorgeous day drifts by outside, wasted.

The Snake Who Swallowed The Rainbow was the first thing I did with rocks that really turned me on:

May 10, 2004 -- mania, sweat, stones, gravity and my dear old Honda.It also brought positive comments from neighbors.
This was the first stack I did for public consumption:

My 'coming out' stack -- June 25, 2004
I hid my developing stacking habit behind the house or down the hill until this one. I met my sidekick Rob while working on it. His property is just downstream.

Right after that we went on vacation to the Florida Keys:

Coral is what they stack in Heaven -- June 30, 2004, Fla. Keys

We stopped at Anne's Beach to play and before I knew what was happening, these two stacks were towering about 8 feet above the beach.  Coral is so much fun to stack. It's light and the grippiest stone anywhere, I'd wager.

The Original Bent Serpent (TOBS, we call him around the rockpile) has been standing since I discovered the Bent Creek Rockpile.

The Original Bent Serpent -- almost two years old now. in 2005. That tree in the background was standing, then fell over in front of TOBS, then TOBS had to jump over it.

 It took me a while to warm up to this photo:
Tall, graceful ... what's not to like? 

My friend D-U-G came to visit and we went for a picnic in August 2005. I never even put a photo of that stack on the blog for some reason. I like it now. It remains unnamed, though I saved it as bellbentstack.

 This is a self-portrait I did in Sept. 2005:
"Portrait of a Man Who Usually has Poison Ivy," let's call it.

 I don't know why. My hat sure was clean back then.

 Meditations on Thominator is a favorite of most everyone who goes to the Bent Creek Sculpture Walk.

Only yellow rocks need apply. Born July 2, 2005I've told the story too many times to repeat it again. So I won't. I have tried to keep it standing year-round for visitors' pleasure. Once I worked on it in 28F weather. It had icicles on it. I love that.

Just upstream from TOBS is another Rock Ness Monster, the Roadside Serpent:
That's a nice photograph, I think. lotsa depth. Oct. 2005 

It is situated so that as you drive up Bent Creek Road, it sort of appears in a way that you aren't quite sure you really saw something.   

One of the things I keep standing most all the time is Rob's Arch, in the Swannanoa River behind my sidekick Rob's house:
About 20 versions of this have stood on that rock. More to come.

 Quite possibly my favorite photo and stack of all time was done on a whim, an accident of available stones and an amount of available time that demanded intensity but not carelessness. It stood for about a week and I named it Timecard:
Great light, rocks, backdrop and moment -- Jan. 27, 2006

 In terms of construction, Three Arches, One Rock was more demanding and unique than most any other thing I have done:

Three Arches, One Rock -- May 10, 2006One of the silly challenges I make for myself is to do stacks featuring a high ratio of arches to rocks on the ground. A single arch requires two rocks on the ground, so three-to-one is going to be hard to top. I'm working on it. 

Family vacation 2006 found us in California, where we'd still live if we hadn't had all those darn kids.  Earlier we'd all played in the surf at Morro Rock, about halfway between SF and LA, and I had stacked Three Connected Arches. They had a visitor when I returned:
Fortuitously, darkness masks mucho guano -- July 7, 2006

I had been out in the sunset playing with rocks that one does not so much stack as mush  together with birdshit. You get used to it after a while. This was the Morro Sunset Stack:
If birdpoop doesn't bother you, Morro Bay is great stacking. July 7, 2006

And last but not least, right behind my house in the Avant Garden Proper is Rollins, named for its striking resemblance to the great Henry Rollins. We had an April snow this year and he stayed outside:
I want Henry himself to come pose with Rollins.

Those are my favorite photos and/or stacks. About three years' worth of gravity and sweat. 

Check back in three years and we'll see what this thing looks like then. Well, check back before then. There's always something strange happening in the Avant Garden.

...mainly because of vacation planning, some idiot who's suing our neighborhood, and work. So he asked me (Josh, his son, 9) to help.

Dad did a few arches-on-pedestals in Rob's yard, and Rob took the pictures.
This is the picture Rob sent to Dad.

This is one of Dad showing some rocks how to balance and asking them to stand on each other.

Dad shows some stacks how to really stand.

The next two are of a kind of "gardening/guardian angel" that Dad hung up in Rob's yard. It's a ghost. They call it Ethel Bledso. He also hung it up over the River. My brother (Matt) and my Mom said it looked like litter.

The "Migrating Arches", which come to the River every spring, summer, fall, and not winter, are back.

The "Migrating Arches", which are rebuilt every year (they fall down in winter), are back.

 That's it for Josh's entry.