Horticultural Alliance To Host Talk On Stones And Land Art

Being a terrestrian at heart,” writes Dan Snow in his book “Listening to Stone,” coining a word of his own, “it’s the earth that intrigues me most.”Mr. Snow will give a talk on Sunday, April 10, at the Bridgehampton Community House, one in a series of monthly lectures on gardening and related topics sponsored by the Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons.

Known as the nation’s premier dry stone wall builder, Mr. Snow uses an ancient technique, which dispenses with mortar and takes advantage of gravity and placement, instead, to create lasting stone structures that are as artistic as they are functional. From solid retaining walls to whimsical pavilions, the Vermont-based Mr. Snow has been crafting stone structures, mostly as art commissions, for the past 40 years.

As a kid, he had spent summers working in the building trades, but always identified as “an artist in search of a medium,” he said in a recent phone interview. He studied painting, photography, woodcarving, and working in plaster while at the Pratt Institute of Art and Design, and when

he returned to his home in New England, he started his search for a way to make a living. “I was someone who liked to make things,” he continued, “and I wanted to find a way to work outdoors and not in a dusty studio.”

His first professional works were more utilitarian—mostly garden and retaining walls. “I was really lucky finding folks who let me make things on their property,” he said. The clients gave him free rein within the realm of what the walls could look like, as long as they were functional. “If I were just a craftsman, I would recognize the limits of the craft and stay within them,” he said, “but I always liked to reach out a little further.”

Today, some of his stone constructions, which are scattered around the world, are large enough to walk through, and they have the feel of mystical and ancient habitations—shelters and sheepfolds that could serve as portals to a world awash in wizards, trolls and faeries. He has created fantastical sculptures like “Stone Clouds,” an installation at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont, and “Wishing Wells” in Helsinki, Finland. Fire pits, waterfalls, pyramids, idiosyncratic beehives and tombs and millstones dot the New England landscape thanks to his efforts.

Mr. Snow is also one of the very few Americans who have been accepted as a master craftsman by the Dry Stone Walling Association of Great Britain. In addition to his two books—”In the Company of Stone: The Art of the Stone Wall” and “Listening to Stone: Hardy Structures, Perilous Follies, and Other Tangles with Nature”—Mr. Snow has also been the subject of a documentary, “Stone Rising,” by director Camilla Rockwell.

Mr. Snow is not unfamiliar with the East End. He studied with sculptor David Lee Brown and has worked at Mr. Brown’s Springs studio in the past.

When asked about his talk on behalf of the HAH, Mr. Snow was quick to modestly point out that “I’m not a good speaker for people who want to know about gardening.” But art in the environment? “That’s my passion,” he said. His lecture will include video clips and photo images of his works, and something he calls “thunkets”—thought-provoking one-liners.

Mr. Snow often speaks and lectures about working in stone and the natural landscape. He just recently gave a presentation at a college in Vermont “where I’ll be installing a piece of land art next month.” A combination of mounded earth and dry stone construction, it is something he described as “an anthropomorphic kind of thing, in a stylized shape of a shark.”

It’s the stonework that we cannot see—culverts and riverside walls and dams—that leave a lasting impression on Mr. Snow. “That early Industrial Age stonework, it supported mills and factories,” he said, describing the projects as “massive, antique, built in dry stone and packed in sand.

“So well built, and so carefully made,” he continued. “In spite of the elements trying to destroy them all the time, they still have plenty of life in them.”

Of his own pieces, one of his favorites is “Archer’s Pavilion,” a “vertically stacked, circular, tent-shaped object,” smack dab in the middle of a field in Newfane, Vermont.

“It’s close enough to the road so you can see it as you drive by,” he said. “I see it a few times a year, and it always grabs me as magic. It’s an unusual shape, it should be made out of canvas, not stone.”

Mr. Snow has a certain reverence “for what has been built and left as relics of the ages.” He described walking through the woods of New England and stumbling upon stone walls and foundations that are artifacts of 18th- and 19th-century farming and agriculture.

“What I get out of that,” he said, “is that someone was active in this place. People lived here, it was their livelihood. And all that is left is remnants of stonework.”

To learn more about Dan Snow and view his gallery, his website is dansnowstoneworks.com. For tickets to his April 10 lecture at the Bridgehampton Community House, “Dry Stone Art in the Landscape: Fleeting Thoughts and Works of Friction,” visit the Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons’ website at hahgarden.org.