Dan Snow: Rock Rest
Dan Snow
Rock Rest 2011
Stone
Maybe because, topographically speaking, the museum area is Brattleboro’s lowest point, it’s where, for me, many memories have settled over the years. Within ear-shot here, linotype machines once clattered away in the press room of the Daily Reformer. And it’s where I went after school in the mid-60s to fill my canvas newspaper sack before heading out on my delivery route.
The Brattleboro Museum & Art Center is now one of our town’s shining lights. And with the dedication of the BMAC Sculpture Garden we’ve taken another step toward making this area attractive and pleasing to all the senses. I hope the stone seats and perches I’ve created here will be enjoyed by everyone, but especially by children—they deserve to have fun, safe spaces for their downtown adventures.
During my working life I’ve shifted freely, back and forth, from artist to dry stone waller. With Rock Rest, I enjoyed the creative process so much that I built the piece twice; once in my Dummerston stone yard and once here beside the museum. The stone was initially collected from a steep slope on a wooded property in Townshend, Vermont. It lay there for 12,000 years after being plucked from the ledges by the last ice age. In Rock Rest, I’ve attempted to simulate the natural process that turns the bedrock into loose stone.
— Dan Snow, 2011
Dan Snow’s Rock Rest was commissioned by BMAC, with support from Judith Freed and others, for the 2011 dedication of the Rubinstein-Freed Sculpture Garden adjacent to the museum. The Sculpture Garden honors Linda Rubinstein’s decades of service to BMAC as a staff member and the memory of Dan Freed (1927-2010), a dear friend of the museum.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Dan Snow is an assemblage artist specializing in site-generated, or locally sourced, natural materials. His dry-stone constructions have included stock-proof fences, pillars, stiles, staircases, and bridges. More complex creations such as garden follies, grottoes, and grandstands, as well as environmental art pieces and figurative works of sculpture, are part of his oeuvre. Snow strives to transfigure the essence of place into new forms and experiences through the manipulation of natural materials. From the practical to the fantastical, Snow’s works in stone fuse vanguard vision with old world techniques and traditions.
Snow has authored three books that tell the story of our heritage in stone and his personal journey in the art and craft of walling. He lectures, leads workshops, and writes about the art and craft of working with dry stone in the landscape, and is the subject of the documentary film Stone Rising. When Snow and his wife (and studio manager), Elin, aren’t traveling for public and private art commissions, they reside in Vermont, where Snow was born and raised.
RELATED RESOURCES
Dan Snow Stoneworks
Art Meets History: A Project of Kasini House
Ask the Artist!