Title: Held in the Grain of Time
Artist Statement:
I noticed this stone because it refused to remain anonymous. Among the muted greys of sand and scattered pebbles, it carried its own language of colour, a deep rust red veined with ochre and amber, as though fire had once moved through it and left a record of its passing. I did not move it. I did not clean the sand from its surface. I photographed it as I encountered it, partially embedded, already in conversation with the ground that held it.
What drew me in was the patterning. The lines felt less like markings and more like memory, the slow inscription of geological time pressed into mineral form. Looking at it, I was reminded that the land keeps its own archive, one written without urgency, without audience, without the need to be read in any immediate way. This stone has endured pressure, heat, fracture, and cooling. It carries transformation within its very structure.
In my reflective practice, I am often attentive to fragments that bear witness to passage. This piece felt like a cross-section of becoming, a surface where past conditions remain visible long after the forces that shaped them have receded. There is something steadying in that recognition. Change does not erase what came before. It layers it. It embeds it.
Placed against the granular texture of sand, the stone offered a quiet study in contrast: solidity against looseness, density against dispersal. And yet both belong to the same continuum. Rock returns to sand over time. Form yields to fragment. What feels permanent is, in truth, in motion.
I left it where it rested. Some objects ask to be gathered. Others ask only to be witnessed. This one felt complete in place, held in the grain of time, carrying its history without needing to be moved or named.
Photo Credit: Amy Tucker, 2026