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Community Creates Art Together
by Melanie King
My hands are numb. An hour into the "sculpture project" and I am in a trance, blocking out everything except for my hands and the stone. Every once in a while I miss the chisel and the hammer grazes my knuckles. Limestone, I am told, is one of the softer stones. One of the softer stones, and I have to pry my fingers open after ten minutes of hammering.
The constant sound of metal hitting rock carries me out of reality, and I am in meditation. I am creating a form from stone, and I understand why Alexander Paris makes this his livelihood.
Last week I volunteered for two hours here on campus to help in creating a sculpture that the Madison County Arts Council will be donating to the new Mars Hill library opening this spring. Carved from a 300-lb block, Madison County's first public sculpture is a relief depicting a theme of mountain music.
The Madison County Arts Council's mission is to "encourage, develop and celebrate the creative works and the people of Madison County."
More than fifty people from all over the community participated in the project to learn the basics of rock sculpting, to volunteer for the community, and to have an experience worth remembering. Mars Hill College Assistant Professor of Art Jane Renfroe and several art majors and other Mars Hill students also participated.
Paris Alexander of Raleigh, an expert in stone sculpture, guided the volunteers in depicting a mountain musician playing a banjo. In conjunction with the Madison County Arts Council and the North Carolina Museum of Art, Paris traveled to Mars Hill as a part of the North Carolina Museum of Art outreach program.
Sculptor Paris Alexander
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Alexander, a self-taught sculptor, explains the council's choice of the sculpture: "The goal of this project is to bring something different and new to the area."
In the past Alexander has had public commissions for the Chapel of the Cross of Chapel Hill, the town of Granite Falls, the Crossroads Fellowship in Raleigh, and the North Carolina High School Athletic Association headquarters in Chapel Hill. Alexander's works have been included in exhibitions such as Artspace, Raleigh, Duke University, and many others.
The volunteers spent the first few minutes discovering the basics of sculpting rock, chiseling out a pre-drawn leaf from a practice stone, learning how to keep a consistent angle and not dig into the stone.
Alexander also showed volunteers how to use different chisels, explaining how the chisel tip affects what type of cut you want. As the volunteers created forms, Alexander reassured them that they usually don't turn out the way you expect.
As I slowly lost the feeling in my hands, I could understand what Alexander meant when he said that it doesn't turn out like you expect. Working on the practice stone I attempted chiseling out a profile. Although I had drawn it out on the stone before I started, it quickly lost the shape of the original, turning into something totally different due to my mistakes and my vision for correction.
After two hours of work the form was beginning to emerge from the stone. My time was up but the sound of metal on rock continued as the other volunteers and Paris started on a new session of the meditative art of stone sculpting.
Other Mars Hill students who participated in the community art project were Joseph Ejefor, Ayako Sakanishi, Courtney McCracken, Cat Hayes, Elizabeth Hart, Ryan Phillips, Hannah Miller, Beth Carswell, Debra Mayers, and Valerie Hobbs.
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