A Relationship With Rocks

This week I've realized that people have many ways of conversing with stones, not always involving sound. Rock walls were the first art surface, and modern people still enjoy looking at cave art and wondering what those image-filled surfaces are saying. We have a rich relationship with all kinds of rocks.

TAIHU ROCK, Chinese, Qing dynasty, 1644-1912, Gift of the P.Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Center for East Asian Art, and museum purchase, Asian Art Department Fund [2008-65], Princeton Unversity Art Museum.

Recently I visited The Princeton University Art Museum in Princeton, New Jersey.  After viewing the brilliant special exhibit, "The Fertile Crescent: Gender, Art, and Society",  I went downstairs to the Asian art collection.  At the bottom of the stairway there is a magnificent decorative garden rock, riddled with holes.  Of course I've seen these rocks before in Chinese gardens but I was surprised to learn that that these limestone "Taihu Rocks", were formed by collaboration between man and nature.  This rock would have been drilled with holes and then immersed under water in Lake Tai in Jiangsu province for perhaps hundreds of years until nature carved, smoothed, eroded and shaped it into its present form.  The resulting "Chinese scholars' rock" was probably displayed in a garden where one could ponder the fascinating shapes it presents.  Surely these rocks must speak as the wind whistles through their holes? Surely they tell stories from their water years?

When I was a kid my parents always planted a huge vegetable garden in our Illinois backyard.  One day they found a rock that looked exactly like the potatoes my mother was digging up for dinner.  In what was an out-of-character mischevious mood, she heated it up with the other spuds and served it to my sister who promptly burned herself with it and did NOT laugh.  A long string of apologies did not allay her offense at having received a stone instead of a potato on her plate.  My mother had no comic talent and felt terrible at her misjudgement.  Whenever I see a "potato rock" I think of that prank gone awry.  Perhaps this story has something to do with my enjoyment of making ceramic "rocks" and mixing them in with real rocks as I did in my Solastalgia installation:

Rocks detail, SOLASTALGIA, ©Joy Kreves 2010

One of my in-laws was buried this week.  At the graveyard  a woman with a green emerald-ringed hand (emeralds symbolize harmony, wisdom, love, reason, and prophecy) placed little rough stones on top of the smooth tombstones of other family members.  I'd forgotten what that meant, and asked.  "It says we've been here, visited..."  Of course!  That is simple enough.  No obscure symbolism there.  The stones speak for people, these with their rough surfaces in contrast to the polished granite headstones, saying "I was here". 

 
I was at Ringing Rocks Park in Eastern Pennsylvania again this past week. The land there is riddled with boulders large and small, deposited by glaciers so long ago... In the middle of a boulder-filled forest

Boulder field at Ringing Rocks Park, Pa, photo ©Joy Kreves

you come to a clearing, a field of boulders where nothing grows.  These rocks hold their own mystery.  When hit with a hammer, some of the rocks ring like a bell, others do not.  Many of them are riddled with dents from the number of times people have tried them, hammer to stone.  The ringers and non-ringers have been

Rocks pitted from hammer hits. Photo ©Joy Kreves

scientifically analyzed and found to contain the same elements.  It does not matter what size or shape they are.  It doesn't matter where or how they rest.  One theory is that it depends on the stresses inside of the rocks.  Basically, it is a still a mystery why the ones that ring do so.  There have been performances there, incorporating sounds of the rocks, but when humans aren't there striking them and forcing sounds I have to wonder, what are the ringing rocks saying?  What histories do they speak of?  What is their role in this unique environment?

I have a large heart shaped rock that came to my attention shortly before my mother died.  For me, this rock symbolizes her presence and I placed it beneath a tree that I can see out my kitchen window.  Once when I did an internet search I found that there are lots of people who have whole collections of heart rocks. That isn't my goal, but I appreciate the one that seemingly found me.

At our grave sites we ask the carved and polished headstones to mark where we lie, and the pebbles to tell we came to visit. We throw them in anger.  We skip them on water and live in houses built from them or have counters topped with polished slabs of them; we value their sculptural forms and we find "special" ones. We wear polished, faceted gemstones if we can afford them, for their symbolism.  The Taihu rocks were eroded by natural lake water in a gentle conversation between man and nature.  Here in the United States our bedrock is now being fractured with a man-made toxic stew in our desperate grab for more natural gas.  I don't know what our energy solution is but surely it cannot rely on this method that too easily poisons us and our environment! 

Rocks are holders of meaning.  It seems all people are attracted to them and we each have our own relationship with them.  I am thankful for the continual evolution of my own relationship with rocks.