There is something inherently special about carving on a field with 110 sculptors from all over North America. This was my second year of carving on this block of Texas limestone. When Scott at Marenakos said he had a stone for me, I had no idea it was a 4000-pound block. It had a mud seam on the back, and I needed to remove this, because in time, it would have separated from the main block. That piece was about 500 pounds. 

Now that the stone was ready to carve, I had no idea what I was going to do. I made a cut in the top left and went on from there. It took two symposiums to carve this sculpture. The story behind this piece is something like a black hole in space. All the energy and matter is getting sucked in, and on the back side, a new energy or world is created. The top left cylindrical shape represents a sun and the bottom right cylinder a moon.

We titled this piece “Genesis”, and I think it’s fitting for the space and for the client it was made for. I need to thank Wade Zick and Pilgrims Firs Camp for acquiring this piece to be on public display. I was planning on taking three years or three symposiums to complete this, but in the end it all worked out. It’s hard to see in the pictures, but I added a lot of different textures to this sculpture. Dale Enoch taught me a new technique called “corn rowing”, which is using a very sharp point-chisel and a hammer to make erratic lines in the stone. This was done on the Sun element.

Carving at a symposium is something I really love to do. You just feel all the energy and hear it too. It is an amazing place to create a sculpture and have many, many people come and talk or even give ideas as to what you’re working on. If you are thinking about coming, give it a chance—you will be amazed by the great people of this group. 

John Lafortune