CAIRN:  a human-made pile or stack of stones 

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For thousands of years, people have stacked stones to guide the way through difficult ground — to direct a traveler, to honor the dead, to mark a summit reached, to leave a sign that someone was here.  A cairn is one of humanity's oldest forms of communication — wordless, weather-worn, and often built to outlast the hands that made it.

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In the Arctic, indigenous tribes built stone totems. Sometimes resembling the human form, they were used for navigation, to indicate good hunting or fishing grounds, or to mark a place of respect. Unlike a simple trail marker, these cairns carry intention: it would communicate that someone was here, and they left this for you. 

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And in more private, contemplative traditions, cairns have served as meditative markers: stones balanced not for navigation or memorial, but simply as an act of presence. Building one requires total attention. A single distracted moment and the whole structure falls. 

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A cairn is balance made visible.

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To balance something is to feel its weight first. Each stone rests against gravity and uncertainty, holding only as long as the one beneath it agrees to hold. A gust of wind, a careless step, and it falls. A cairn rarely stands alone — older stacks lean near newer ones, turned slightly toward each other, the way people do.

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Balance is not the absence of weight — it's weight, arranged. Some loads can't be set down. They can only be positioned so that their interdependence creates the illusion of strength. Some days that illusion holds. Some days it doesn't.

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These works are part of a Stacked Stone series begun in 2020 focusing on that moment in between: stones balanced, shadowy outlines of their carefully chosen placements indicating what we hold, what we hide and what we try to keep together.