Stone Days
Every day for one year the artist selected a text to inspire the arrangement of stones on a light table. She photographed these arrangements, edited them into simple shapes, and published them on stonedays.ca alongside the corresponding text.
Stone Days is a diary of days. All kinds of days: good days, bad days, on days, off days, slow days, stone days.
In 1927 Barbara Todd’s grandfather built a cottage on the shores of Lake Huron. Every year, she gathered stones on the beach. For almost as long, Todd has also gathered gems of speech from passing conversations and the radio, as well as from her wide ranging reading, especially of poetry.
For one calendar year Todd assigned herself the task of selecting one text each day. She then allowed that text to suggest an arrangement of small stones on a light table. The arrangements were made quickly and intuitively. They were then photographed, Photoshopped, and printed on vellum. The translucent layering of these images evokes qualities of presence and memory: the cumulative effect of the passing of days.
These are the three hundred and sixty five drawings and texts of Stone Days.