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HOWARD, THE ONE HUNDRED THIRTY POUND MUSCLE MAN

My Delivery System

Moving stone, due to its mass, has always been a topic of conversation and interest to the general public. Pyramid construction, Stonehenge, Mayan ruins, etc. Seems to be a endless source of TV documentaries. Sculpture groups give seminars on handling large heavy stones. Working with gravity, simple levers, inclined planes, etc. Is essential to stone-loving sculptors. Today we have lifting devices of all sorts to make things easy, but it wasn't so long ago these aids were not often used.

When I was attending Portland State University in the early 1970s, I cut letters and polished monuments after classes and often delivered monuments with Howard Coleman, a five-foot-six 130-pound machine polisher. We both worked at a tombstone manufacturing shop in Portland, Oregon Howard got his start in the stone trade working in Medica Lake white granite quarry in eastern Washington, near Spokane Howard would take me along when he had monuments to install in local cemeteries around Portland and sometimes outside of the Portland area as well.

He needed no help with with flat markers 2 foot by 1 foot, or 2 foot 4 inch by 1 foot 4 inch. Or 4 foot by 1 foot double markers. Nor did he need help with hickey or slant markers, they only weighed 150 to 200 hundred pounds.

It's a special language this monument business. I taught it to my daughter and we still laugh at things like ”carnelian 3-0 x1-10x 0-8 ck molds -rock sides with 4-0x 1-0 x 8 base.” All a stone man needs to know to start working making a specific color, size, and detailed monument.

Howard cut and polished raised lettering by hand at night for extra money using hand-held emery bricks. My mentor Julius would rough out the lettering with the sandblast and Howard would take it from there, polishing square and sharp corners with lots of fine details with a flat recessed background in granite.

I spent many pleasant Fridays helping him deliver monuments in a 1947 four-speed green flatbed, equipped with split rear end for the open road to local cemeteries.

Monuments, that is die and base, went mainly to Jewish cemeteries, and occasionally to a gypsy section in one cemetery. Flat run the lawn mower over the top markers is good enough for most of us. Its all about price and cemetery efficiency and a lack of interest in the dead. In our mainstream society, no “day of the dead” ceremonies remembering our parents or grandparents north of the Rio grand.

Howard’s basic tools were planks, broom handle rollers , 4x4 cribbing, plywood for path construction, a 4-wheel balloon tire heavy-duty hand truck, and a pinch bar seldom used, it being a dangerous tool. He would deliver and install 500 to 1000 pound fragile and expensive monuments with ease. Knowing that any chips or scratches were unacceptable to the customer. He would raise them up on the base with the hand truck and put a special goop he rolled in his hand while I rocked the monument back. He slid them down off the truck on his trusty planks and moved them through the cemetery without damaging the grass with his hand truck on plywood roads he laid down.

With a guy like Howard, what company would bother with a lifting device? We both worked cheap, low wages and long hours. Fridays were often 7 to 7 by the time we got back to the shop with a lunch at one of Howard's favorite beer joints.

Early one spring – I don't remember whether it was hood river or The Dalles, Oregon – Howard asked me to go with him in the old green flatbed loaded with his trusty planks, 4x4 cribbing, 4x4 by 8 foot beams, chains and belts, come along puller, plywood road material and a solid stone altar about 8 foot long and 4 foot wide and 3 feet high, it must have weighed about 8 tons. It was to be installed in a catholic church. I didn't know how he was going to do this so I told my wife and children I would be back later in the week.

Howard had already cased the job out, for when we got to church parking lot,two auto wreckers pulled up, one one each side of the flatbed. We rigged the lifting cables, the wreckers coordinated the lift and Howard drove the flatbed out. I don't remember whether he had them lower on to a steel cart or whether it came down on his 4x4 roller system, it's been 40 years. I do remember that it took 2 days to move the altar with the come along up into the front door and down the center aisle and up to the front of the church. Turn it and and safely land this fragile and expensive stone. I assume it's still there.

Food and lodging at a motel was provided by the company we worked for. I remember when we drove back down into the Willamette Valley the heavy rich smell of spring in the air and feeling of accomplishment working with this gentle man. I learned a lot from him and a few years later when I had my own little business I had a opportunity to move and turn an altar with my companion Schmitty. I will save that story for another blog.

Whenever I go back to my home town in Minnesota I always visit the cemeteries where my brothers and sisters and parents are buried, all with beautiful upright die and base monuments, and think about my roots.

My Final Installation System

What Makes Stone Sculpture Special?

There is  good information on the net on stone sculpture.  Most of it centers on the artist.  There is also a lot of good stuff on methods of carving.  So I don’t intend to duplicate that  work here.  I would like to describe what I believe makes stone sculpture a unique art form,  and why I bother to carve stone.

I don’t know about other areas of the country, but stone sculpture is a mystery to most people in my home, Portland Oregon  This is probably due to the fact that there is little history of stone carving in timber and basalt geography.  By my estimation,  looking at the Oregonian newspaper over the years I would estimate stone sculpture probably shows once every 800 hundred gallery opening.  It would most likely be abstract.  Consequently any one who chooses this art form would have to be quite motivated.

              

What we call sculpture as an art form comes in 3 popular formats.

1   assemblage - building up three-dimensional forms with metal or various materials adding or subtracting materials to suite.  Google “Cindy Dececco mig welding” for sculpture.

2    modeling -   developing  three-dimensional forms with clay.  Again adding and subtracting as needed to achieve form desired.  Then baking the clay or sending it to a foundry to use to make forms to cast in metal. 

3     sculpture  -  from the Greek word to remove, most often using wood or stone.  Not that wood or stone cant be used for assemblages as well.  But here I use the word sculpture for  subtraction only to create form.

By now you should see that these are very distinct and different art forms, only loosely related to each other.  However we most often refer to  all three of them as sculpture.     It's confusing.  Stone sculpture tends  to be the least understood and consequently the least popular and certainly the most rare of the three.

A friend of mine,  Gary McWilliams, says stone sculpture sells at about the same rate as poetry.  Well said.  I think there a lot of good reasons for this.  I will list a few here.

Because of stone sculpture's slow sales rate not many young people can afford to squander there time on it.  I certainly didn’t, to many financial responsibilities to spend time on art that has little market demand.  Consequently its entry level practitioners are for the most part no longer looking for ways to make money.  They have other motives. Anyone who knows much about the world of art understands that artists who are successful spend much of there time promoting themselves.  It is just part of the business. The starving artist who is suddenly discovered is for the most part another myth. I believe one of the reasons you don’t see much stone sculpture around is is partially due to the fact it is mostly done by a older group who don’t work very hard at self promotion. They probably sculpt stone for personal challenge and enjoy working with some thing that’s real,  in a world that tends to be quite intangible.

Stone sculpture like another unpopular art form, opera,  requires many skills.  Opera as one is taught in music appreciation studies, requires language,  music,  voice,  and acting skills.  Its complex.  Stone sculpture also requires many skills cognitive sense of proportion balance and scale, the ability to interpret the possibilities and limitations of the stone you are working on, and all technical tool skills. The learning curve can be slow,  an unpopular notion these days.

             

I say stone sculpture, like opera, may not be popular,  but once you are exposed to it,  it can be,  and often is,  an emotional experience.

Another problem facing the stone sculptor is that it is a difficult art form,  heavy and dirty.  Its not like the PBS bit showing a  girl with her bottom facing you holding a chisel above her head striking a beautiful block of white marble. It cant be done in a cozy studio or heated shed.  It’s an outside sport not meant for the faint hearted.  Although 50% of the sculptors I know are women,  they tend to be stout hearted and determined gals.  Google “Tom Small basalt sculpture  carving” the making of the secret language of flowers .  Stone carvers as a group are a determined bunch and do it mostly for personal challenge.

Then there is the problem of material or stone to carve.   Suitable stone is rare in the Pacific Northwest,  a basalt flooded basin.  Locating and purchasing stone can be a difficult process and a real financial barrier.  I personally have spent many summer vacations hunting for stone in southeastern Alaska,  Idaho,  Montana, and California.  Read "Marble on Edge" on Gary Williams'  Stone Arts of Alaska http://www.stoneartsofalaska.com/ web page.   I will of course have future blogs on this subject.

Tools must be sent for there is no local sculpture supply store.  Cost can be a barrier -- air compressors, saws,  hand tools, grinders,  abrasives, etc. etc. are all specialty items .  SEE Your local stone supplier for tool resources.

ALEXANDRA MOROSCO http://www.moroscofinearts.com/

Location  - it's loud and messy,  neighbors won't approve of your chosen passion.  Renting a space can be expensive and difficult to find.

Finally there is the storage issue.  I suspect most sculptors keep their art in their homes.  I know two friends who keep theirs in their basement.  I find mine too heavy to carry up and down stairs so I keep mine in my shed as you can see in the video above.

It's no wonder, considering all the barriers,  that stone sculpture is so rare and misunderstood.  I think it is hard for people to have appreciation for something they have rarely seen, and have no knowledge of what it is,  or how it's done.  It is my belief, that if you grow up in a culture where stone art is rare,  you will not have much appreciation for it.  So in the future I hope to shed some light on this strange passion of mine.