The Art of the Stone Wall – Dan Snow

Workshops limited to 20 participants

July 5 2009
Tuition: $150

October 24th and 24th
Tuition: $300
Application Form

The setting for this two day, hands-on workshop is along-side a quiet road overlooking the orchards of Scott Farm in Dummerston, VT. A one-hundred year old wall in derelict condition will be examined for its structural qualities, dismantled and rebuilt. Participants will be given one-on-one instruction by Dan Snow and another DSWA certificated craftsman.

Bring your friends and family and rent one of Landmark Trust historic Vermont vacation properties located on or near the farm. www.landmarktrustusa.org

faculty

Dan Snow is an art maker and dry stone craftsman. He creates site-specific, environmental works, builds traditional dry stone constructions and assembles small-scale, stand-alone sculpture for clients in his native Vermont, New England and beyond. His dry stone constructions include fences, pillars, staircases, arches and grandstands. Environmental works include grottos, pavilions and causeways. Sculptures combine stone, wood and metal into three-dimensional fantasy worlds.

Snow has been building with stone since working on an Italian castle restoration in 1972. His career as a professional dry stone waller began in 1976 with field wall repairs and retaining wall constructions. In 1986 and 1994, Snow apprenticed with Master craftsmen wallers in the British Isles.

After thirteen years in the Dry Stone Walling Association of Great Britain’s Craftsman Certification Scheme, Snow achieved his Mastercraftsman certificate in 2000. Dan Snow has instructed many workshops in dry stone walling and lectured on the craft across the USA, in Canada and Great Britain. As a DSWA Examiner he has organized test venues and tested dozens of wallers in the certification scheme.

In 2005 and 2007, Dan Snow was invited by the University of Art and Design, Helsinki to lecture on environmental art and instruct 1-2 weeklong workshops, with Environmental Art Department graduate students, in the Finnish countryside. At Kansas State University, in 2008, Snow presented a slide lecture on his artwork and creative process to a large audience of faculty and students.

In 2001 Snow authored “In the Company of Stone”, published by Artisan, with photographs of his work by Peter Mauss. “Stone Rising,” a film by Camilla Rockwell, released in 2005, captures the spirit of Snow’s constructions and chronicles the process of their creation. “Listening to Stone,” 2008, is Dan Snow’s second book of practical and poetic observations on the walling life.