Cut the 400 lb limestone block down to 180 and the thing finally looks like it's standing

Two years on this one. It was a 400 lb Indiana limestone block, upright, meant to be a figure. I kept carving to the drawing and it kept looking like a boulder with a suggestion in it. Took it down to 180 lbs last month. Dumped the rest in the yard.

I've been fighting that block since I got it. Drawings were fine. The problem was I was carving the block I ordered instead of the block that was there.

The whole thing started reading different once the mass came off. I don't have a better way to say it than that, and I'm not going to pretend it was a decision I made on purpose.

What finally pushed me was a mason I've known since the 90s walked through and said nothing for a while and then asked what the block weighed. I told him. He said well, that's your problem. He wasn't wrong.

Delivering it to the client in two weeks if the weather holds.

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Inês Costa·2h

The line about carving the block you ordered instead of the block that was there is the whole thing, I think. I work with light and paper, not stone, but the same happens: I plan a print and the water decides something else, and the work only turns when I stop arguing. Two years is a long patience. What draws me is that you did not get there by deciding, you got there by finally listening to the material. The rest of it in the yard is not waste, it is the part of the drawing that was never going to fit.

Inês Costa·1h

"The work only turns when I stop arguing" is the part I keep chewing on. I do cyanotype, developed in seawater, so the paper and the salt have opinions too. Half the time I'm not making a print, I'm losing an argument politely.

The one thing I'd push back on, gently: I don't think the rest in the yard is only the drawing that didn't fit. Some of it is just what you had to go through to be able to hear the block at all. We don't usually keep the parts that taught us.

Roman PetrakOP·1h

Fair point about the yard. I've kept pile rock from every piece I've ever done, mostly for plinths and repairs, so maybe I'm calling it waste because calling it anything else feels precious. Saltwater for cyanotype development, though. That I want to hear about. What does the salt actually do to the paper, or is it just that it doesn't rinse clean the way fresh water does.

Roman PetrakOP·1h

The arguing is the part nobody warns you about. Two years of it and you start to think you're just bad at this. Then the block tells you what it was always going to be and you feel like an idiot for not hearing it sooner.

I'd push back on one thing. The pile in the yard isn't the part of the drawing that didn't fit. The drawing was never going to fit anything. What's in the yard is stone that had a different job and I was too stubborn to let it have one. Some of it's going into a smaller piece. I don't throw away good limestone, I paid for it.

Seawater cyanotype. That I'd like to see. Does the salt keep working on the print after it's dry, or does it stop when you pull it?

Giulia Bruno·2h

More than half the block in the yard, and the piece only becomes itself. I keep thinking about that because in printmaking we make our peace with the opposite: the plate is never what you imagined, so you keep pulling proofs until the image and the matrix agree on something. Your version costs a lot more than mine.

What I'd push on slightly is "not a decision I made on purpose." Removing 220 pounds is not nothing, you still chose to keep going. Maybe intent is just the thing that arrives after you've already committed.

Either way, congratulations on it finally standing. Two years is honest time.

Elin Holm·58m

The printmaking comparison only half works, though. A plate lets you pull another proof. Cut stone doesn't come back, so the "keep going until they agree" method is the one thing you can't do. Which is maybe why intent shows up late here. You can't test your way to it.

Roman PetrakOP·18m

You're half right and I'll give you the half. A plate gets pulled again, stone doesn't. That's true.

But you can still ruin a plate. Overwork an aquatint and it's mud, and you can't pull it back. Every medium has a point where the proof stops being information and starts being damage. Stone just makes you find that point with no undo.

Where I'd push back is "you can't test your way to it." Every cut is a test. The chisel tells you what the stone is before your eye does. You're just testing with no second chance, which is the whole difference, and I'd argue it makes the reading sharper, not later.

Roman PetrakOP·1h

You're right that I kept going. That's a decision, sure. But keeping going isn't the same as knowing. For most of those two years I was cutting to hold the drawing, not to find the figure. The last 220 came off because I finally stopped defending the plan. That's what I mean by not on purpose. It arrived. I didn't schedule it.

Your plate thing is the better version of the same problem. You can pull a proof and look at it. I can't put the stone back. Every cut is final, so I spent years not making the one that mattered.

Two years is honest, yeah. So is the pile in the yard.