Stone Asemics
I want to learn the language of stones. To think and feel in deep time. To dissolve the edges of my body when it makes contact with stone, becoming a lichen. Stone Asemics is an experiment in writing-with stone, asking stone to be my collaborator in mark-making. This series emerged from my interactions with a gnarly white stone I found beside a footpath in Bruton. It has a luminous grey interior that shines through where the crusty surface is broken.
Pressing paper against this stone, I rubbed charcoal against her sharp edges. The charred willow broke under pressure against the stone’s ridges and glided over her crevices, catching the rough-smooth texture of her landscape.
The asemics — non-semantic script — emerge as my hand communicates with the stone, through the weight and speed of the willow charcoal on the fibrous wood paper. A communion of stone, human, willow and tree pulp. The script is indecipherable to both myself and the stone, but marks the collision of our timescales, the fastness of my moving hand and the solidity of her form. Sometimes frenetic, sometimes angry, sometimes blurred, these dancing non-words speak a language neither stone nor human, but something in between.
Stone Asemics was created during the Write Now residency at Hauser & Wirth Somerset, May 2024.