106 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {landmark} words by JOHANNA HARLOW • photography by ROBERT SIEGEL stone river Located a stone’s throw from Stanford University’s Rodin Sculpture Garden and the Cantor Arts Center, a testament to finding beauty among the ruins is tucked away in a grove of trees. Stone River, a series of stones winding along a trench carved in the earth, was created in 2001 by British sculptor Andy Goldsworthy using debris from the 1906 and 1989 earthquakes. Andy paid a visit to Stanford’s “boneyard,” a place off Old Page Mill Road where the college housed the rubble of university buildings destroyed by this terrible twosome of natural disasters. With the assistance of eight “wallers” skilled in the ancient craft of laying stonework without mortar (called dry-stone), Andy took 128 tons of rock and transformed it into this 320-foot-long art installation in 2001. The top of the wall is at ground level and situated along an east-west orientation, creating a constant shift of shadow and light playing off the golden hue of the sandstone. The earthbound design is meant to look like an archaeological excavation and there’s certainly something primeval about the way Stone River narrows at its peak, like the spine of a massive snake. The stonework tapers gradually at both ends, submerging into the dust whence it came. “My use of the stone has in some ways returned the stone to the earth—another leg of its journey,” the artist wrote in his journal.
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