Bỳ-en-sòs: Appalachian Water Stones
Some things don’t need to be transformed to become art. Sometimes they simply need to be noticed.
I spend a lot of time in Middle Island Creek. I’m usually looking down, partly because I’m trying not to fall, but mostly because there is always something to see.
A piece of glass. An unusual shape. A stone that looks completely ordinary until the light hits it differently.
And every now and then, there is one I can’t leave behind.
I’ve brought stones home from the creek for years. Some end up around the house or outside. Some sit on a shelf because there was simply something about them that made me pick them up.
I don’t always know why.
I’ve learned that I don’t need to.
Bỳ-en-sòs grew from those stones.
Like Deò and Dùthchas, the name connects this work to my Scottish ancestry and to the relationship between Scotland and Appalachia that has become increasingly meaningful to me.
But the heart of Bỳ-en-sòs is here, in the creek.
These stones are original Appalachian artifacts, shaped by earth and water long before they ever reached my hands.
That matters to me.
I don’t want to take a creek stone and make it look like something else. I’m not interested in erasing what the water has done or polishing away the evidence of where it has been.
The water is part of the artist.
Maybe the first artist.
It has softened edges, carved openings, exposed layers, and changed these stones through years of movement that I will never be able to measure.
By the time I find one, most of the work has already been done.
My part begins with noticing.
I walk the creek intuitively, picking up what catches my attention. Sometimes I know immediately that a stone belongs with another. Other times I bring one home with absolutely no idea what I’m going to do with it.
Then I wait.
When I begin putting the stones together, I don’t start with a drawing or a plan for what the finished piece should look like. I work with their existing shapes, their weight, their texture, and the way one stone relates to another.
I move them.
Turn them.
Walk away.
Come back.
And eventually there is a moment when they settle into place and I know to stop.
That part feels familiar to me.
It’s the same intuitive process that runs through so much of my work. I pay attention first. I don’t force an answer simply because I want one. I let the relationship between the pieces reveal itself.
There is also something beautifully simple about working with stone.
A photograph captures a moment.
A Dùthchas holds pieces of a place.
Bỳ-en-sòs begins with something that has already been held by the land for longer than I can comprehend.
I think about that sometimes when I’m standing in the creek.
How many times has the water moved across this stone? How many floods has it been through? How many winters has it spent beneath cold water? How many people have walked past it without ever knowing it was there?
Then one day, I notice it.
That doesn’t make the stone more important than it was before.
It simply changes my relationship with it.
And perhaps that is one of the threads running through all of my art.
I am drawn to what already exists.
Things shaped by water. Things weathered by time. Things with histories I will never completely know.
I don’t feel the need to give them a new story.
I would rather listen to the one they already carry.
That’s what Bỳ-en-sòs has become for me.
It is a collaboration between the land, the water, the stone, and the person who finally stopped long enough to notice.
The creek did the shaping.
I simply brought the stones together.
I invite you to experience Bỳ-en-sòs.
