 Good afternoon, and welcome to Moments with Melinda. I am your host, Melinda Moulton, and today my guest is Thea Alvin. Thea, thank you so much for joining me. Oh, thank you so much for having me. This is really a pleasure. I'm so excited to have you. Well, let me tell my viewers a little bit about you. Thea is a stone sculptor, stone mason, artist in stone, maker of stone experiences, a stone wizard whose work defies gravity. Have I missed anything? No, it covers the stony part. That's the stony part. Well, there's a lot about you that my viewers are gonna wanna learn about. Now you've been written up in the New York Times, highlighted by Oprah and covered over the years by multiple news outlets for your extraordinary stone art and creations. Thea, are you aware of how remarkable you and your work are? It's hard for me to answer that. Yes, I understand that there's celebrity attached to it, but in my everyday life, I'm just me, just doing the things that I do on my farm, in my home, with my family. It feels really extraordinary to have been so lucky then to have so many opportunities. So I'm very grateful always for those things. But as far as feeling extraordinary, not really. I feel like me, I feel regular, if that's a thing. Well, you are regular and you're humble and you have a great deal of humility. I understand that you are an extrovert. Did you love being around people? I did. And I understand your humility, but the work that you do is, it's genius. And so many people who follow you in your work just are in awe of you and the work that you do. So I wanted to share that with you because I get very emotional when I see your work and you and I are, I'm on social media with you and I've read all your stuff, but I just want you to know that I am very moved by what you do. My husband, I built a stone house and my husband has done stone masonry. And it's what you're doing is beyond anything that anybody can imagine. So we will move on because I know you're probably blushing. And this isn't what you want to talk about is, but I want to ask you, tell us a little bit about your life growing up. And I'd also like to know what inspired you to work in stone. Well, as a child, I was born in Cape Cod and I grew up with Martha's Vineyard with my father. But when I was little, I lived with my mom for the first 10 years of my life and we lived sort of on a hippie commune for a bit and then near to her parents. And I had a lifestyle on the beach in the early 70s where everything was loosey-goosey and free love and all the beautiful hippie things. And then I went to live with my father who was quite religious and very strict. And then I ran away from that experience when I was 18 and moved to Vermont to a hunting camp in Wilkett that my husband and I converted into sort of a house. It was challenging at best. Then I had three little kids right off the bat. They were little when they started and they're much bigger now. But then when I divorced, when I was 28, I came back to stone masonry, which had been my father's profession. And I had done masonry throughout my marriage and throughout the rearing of my kids as a thing that I would do in my yard and for my friends and sort of around. But as a professional, when I was 28, I started working for masons in the stowe area. And I learned that working for an hourly wage was not going to support my kids. So I began to work, to develop my skill and to come back to being an artist, which was what my mom's legacy had been. My mother and her father were both artists. And so to use stone as a medium and to find a way to make stone into art was the mission that I took on. At the time I was working in stowe at Stowe Craft Gallery, which is now called Remarkable Things. And my friend Kirsten Reese, who is now Kirsten Reese Keynes, is a fabulous metal artist. And she was then. And she entered me into the SEBA show, which is the South Ann Burlington Business and Arts Association. And she said, you're gonna go in and you're gonna do this. And I said, what am I gonna do? And she said, you will figure it out. And so I learned how to build an arch in order to enter a piece of sculpture in that show. And the first thing was I was fairly poor. I was a single mom of three young children. And I didn't have a truck or stone masonry tools per se. And I had never built a stone arch before and I didn't own any stone. So I began to ask around and I was gifted a whole pile of thrown out marble that was in a heap. And what is now the Shaw's parking lot in Waterbury? And I went to that parking lot every day for a whole summer and played with that heap of stone and my kids ran wild through that area. And I taught myself how to build an arch. And since then I've been on a mission to build arches and I work on them all over the world wherever I can and study arch technology and bridges and vaults and cross vaults and groin vaults and all the things that I can imagine that is an arch. And right now I've been focused on building pizza ovens which are domes with arches on the side of them. So it's been a very cool experience to travel the path of what stone masonry is and the historical significance of it and then bring that back to what is art and how does art and trade intersect and where do they diverge? And that's right in that moment is where my niche is. And so many artists don't have the gift of being able or don't have the opportunity to be able to make a business. It's really hard to be an artist to make a business but you're creating works of art that are actually usable and not just arches but circles. I mean, it's, so I wanted to ask you where does your creative energy flow from? Do you vision your work before you begin creating it or while you are creating it? What is your creative process? So that's a very interesting question because I know a lot of artists have sketchbooks and they create a whole series of designs they intend to build one day or projects, they jot down notes in some kind of sketch form. I find that I am directly inspired by projects. So I don't have goal projects. I don't have visionary long-term things that I'm imagining and planning for. I am specifically inspired by locations and the client needs and the environment in that space. So I am often, I have this opportunity in this amazing culture where someone will see the body of my work and say, we want you to come and build us something. We don't know what it is yet. So I arrive and do a site interview and I'm interviewing the landscape, the people that live there and what is the culture of that space? And by that I mean, are there animals? Are there children? Is there water? What is the climate like? And then I take all of those things and I juxtapose that with what do I want to bring to the space and what is the history? What is my recent building history and how do I make this thing new and inspiring for me to build? And then that all comes together and that whole package then compares to what is the available material and what is the available budget? And in the budget, there's two components, time and money. And then all of that has to coordinate to create what installation happens for those folks at that place. And you work with drywall. I mean, you don't use mortar in your work, do you? You know, I don't typically use mortar. However, I do use mortar. It is required in some locations. I was just sent back to Jacksonville, Wyoming to restore a structure that I had built there that was a drystone wall sculpture. And it was built in such a way that moose and elk and deer would be able to scrub on it without destroying an arch or some overhead structure that would then require me to come back out and repair it. I built a series of walls that had created enclosure and privacy without having a big arch. So there were two windows that if you were a child and you looked through both windows, you could see the grand Tetons right there. It just lined up and it was specifically for kids. What I did not anticipate was that someone would come along and steal the entire top of the wall. So I got sent back there to repair the wall and I put a new top on it and that was mortared down so that it wouldn't be able to be stolen or manhandled or abused. And likewise on college campuses, sometimes college students get a little frisky and can do some mischief. I'm sure they don't mean it, but it just accidentally happens. Anyway, and college campuses where things are likely to be climbed, most of the stone above three feet high and the stone in the arches is all mortared in. That's just for liability and security. Security, most of your work is done dry. It's amazing. Now you are a little woman. I am little. You are a little woman, but you are a huge woman with a tremendous amount of strength and power. You also, I wanna talk about your strength because you lift rocks that are 60, 70 pounds. And also I understand that you do not have any fingerprints anymore. Could you talk a little bit about your strength and fingerprints? Well, according to OSHA standards, which is the work site safety, women are only supposed to lift 40 pounds and otherwise have mechanical or other assistance to lift an object. Personally, I can lift over 200 pounds and doing that repeatedly builds a certain kind of muscle structure. And I have been working with my body since I was 16. So it's not uncommon for me to lift five tons of stone in a day. So just repetitive motion over time has given me a very strong and the fact that I'm short has offered me so much advantage. I don't strain my muscles because my trunk is so short and I'm already close to the ground. So I don't have to lean too far to get to it. So those are advantages. Being small is an advantage in terms of lifting and working mostly close to the ground. However, getting to the higher spaces and the taller and all that, there's any number of ladders and scaffolds and all kinds of things to climb up and get to. As far as not having fingerprints, they do wear off. I'm looking at my hands now. The fingerprints wear off, the calluses wear in and off, and they grow back. It's a constant state of change and development and bank robbing. That's so wild for you, that's so wild. Well, listen, you have worked all over the world and I'm just a huge fan. So I'm just gonna tell you, I think you've reached rock star status, no pun intended, right? So I would love to try to share your website. I'm gonna try to do this with our viewers and look at some of the work which you can comment on. Would that be okay with you? Certainly, thank you. All right, let me try to do this. If it doesn't work, I don't wanna screw things up here. All right, there we are. Can you see that? Yes. Okay, perfect. So your website is myearthwork.com, right? Yes. It is, so folks, look at it. To my viewers, I want you to go visit the Alvin's website, myearthworks.com. There's no ass on it, it's just right. Myearthwork.com and check out her website. But here's your gallery. So I just wanna give an idea of what you do. So why don't we just start with a couple of these and just talk about them? I mean, look at, and I hope I'm giving it the breadth that it deserves here, at myearthworknoass.com. So Thea, talk a little bit about the structures that you create that have these almost like circles that create this three-dimensional depth. Talk a little bit about that. Well, what you're seeing here in this particular image is the helix. And this helix is in my front yard right now on the edge of Route 100. And it is three arches in a series with a corkscrewing wall around it. So it looks like it's a strand of DNA when you're seeing it. The thing about arches, which is super cool, is that they are on a single plane. If you can imagine a straight line, the arch spans between one end and the other end of that straight line. And the way that I've made this look like it's in motion is by twisting the wall that receives the arch. So where the right side of that arch comes down, the wall immediately turns to the left and sweeps up and becomes the arm of the second arch in the middle. And that comes down and immediately sweeps to the left and becomes the right side arm of the last arch. So the whole thing looks like and is actually in a twist. And you say gravity secured, there's no mortar there. That's all. There's no mortar there. So how do you get that last stone? I mean, how do you, will you have an arch? You have a form used, right? And then you build it over the form. And that's something our viewers need to understand because when you look at it, you just, you don't know that. And it's almost like it's magic. All right. I tell people it's a yoga trick. It's a yoga trick. Well, you're about, you're a very zen human being here. So I wanted to go to, let's see. I wanted to talk about this. Oh yeah. So beautiful. And can you talk a little bit about this sculpture? Sure. This is a moon gate that's out at Mandala Gardens in Marion, Illinois. And this demonstrates a kind of element of artwork that I find fascinating. And it's something that I'm really keen to explore more of. And it's not the work itself, but it's how reflection and movement and light and wind and water all can affect what the piece of work looks like throughout the year. So here you see a moon gate in a reflecting pool. And the whole thing becomes then a new image. You have all of the light and color and combinations of the environment around it. So part of imagining in advance when you come to the situation is to see it in all of those opportunities. And then in looking for new settings to put work, if there isn't a pond, I'm always looking to build one for somebody. But also to find ways to imagine the piece of work in a setting that involves sunlight and shadow and weather. And make sure that when I'm working through the process of what it will look like, the design process, that all of those things are taken into consideration and that they become part of what I'm able to share with the client and with their environment. One of the things that is really important to know about when a sculpture of this size happens in your space is that it's gonna be incredibly messy for quite a while while we're building. I make a huge mud hole. I think mud is the number one component of stonework it's going to rain when I'm working, it's a rule. And we make a terrible mess and then put it all back together after. And it takes a while for the land to heal and for a setting like this image to really fully come into itself. So watching these works age is really a beautiful thing because you won't have fresh grass to begin with. And I am lucky to have portraits of this particular moon gate sent to me fairly frequently. There's a blue heron that hangs out there quite often. Stunningly beautiful. Now this, so stop me. I mean, this was a project that you did in, did you do this in Italy? So those are what you're seeing there as a chapel inside and outside, which is in Vermont. It's a private residence. And then the moon gate there is a clock that's in Wisconsin. It's a solstice clock. On the shortest day of the year, the sun will come up and cruise through that circular window and hit the standing stone. There are three standing stones in the back. It hits the center one in the middle point with a beam of light at dawn. So, Thea, in, you know, 500 years, a thousand years of our species can survive are regardless. People will look at this and say, how did they build this? Yeah, I love that. Yeah, it's amazing, beautiful. I think it's fabulous to have, to build steep time structures and to offer the question, like, what were they thinking into the future? Because I often ask that as I'm working on restorative things. Now, as you're going over each of these pictures, it should open a link for your viewers to see some of the builds of each one of those things. There's a whole, it should, if the maintenance of my website is limited. Well, let's talk about this because you also use water in your, this was done in Boulder, Colorado, right? And you use, you, not only, I mean, you're, I'm very emotional here about this, it's so extraordinary. You take all the elements of nature and you pull them together in these incredibly gorgeous, beautiful works of art. And so here is a beautiful waterfall that you've created. Talk a little bit about that. So this waterfall was a problem. And the problem was the solution, which is what I so love about onsite design. The woman that owns this property, her name is Tatt. And she bought three lots together in Boulder, Colorado. And there was an old house on the lots. And in order to build her new house, they took down the old house. And when they did, they discovered that there was a spring in the basement that they had then to do something with all this water. Now, normally a spring would be a very terrible thing to have in your house. But in Boulder, they're in the desert. And so now suddenly she had this opportunity, she had water rights. But where do you put this much water and how do you use this much water? So that was the problem. And the solution became a 10,000 gallon cistern that I had the opportunity to build with the build team there. There was a landscape architect named Marco Lam and the builder Isaac Savitz of Silver Lining Builders. Those two men and Tatt and the landscape, she sort of did the botany, the design and implantation of the things. We used this water to create a high walled garden for Tatt and her property. The point that the waterfall comes from is more than six feet off the ground. And it's over a series of caves that on top of which are planted gardens for people to eat from. On the inside, it's a three-sided high wall garden. On the inside are planted plants for the people that live in the house. On the outside are planted plants for people to eat from who happened to walk by. And there are signs to that effect. And it's all irrigated from the water that's coming out of this cistern. And you can see in the photo, there's that sort of diagonal line. That's representing a sort of a handrail for a staircase that goes down to the inside of that cistern. So if you were an animal or a person who wanted to swim or who fell in, you could walk up the staircase and then pass under the waterfall stone and out through the cave system and get out without any damage or danger. So it became a neighborhood hub for all the kids to play and jump in and an entire ecosystem for all of the animals who don't have surface water in Boulder, Colorado to come and drink from and use. Thea, you create experiences. I'm going to stop sharing our screen because I want to get back to you. And I have, we're coming down sort of tour. I could talk to you for an afternoon, but you believe that rocks are alive. I think I read that. I do. And I want to hear a little bit more about that. Well, I think that rocks have personalities and I think that they can store a lot of energy of experiences that they have. And sometimes rocks want to do what you ask them to do and sometimes they don't. And I try and listen to them because I use them all the time and I have a lot of respect for the natural environment. We live together with the things that are outside and so to force them to our will or to force them to do something that they don't want to do, I think is, we are not the top species that are here. We just happen to be the ones that are communicating about it. So the rocks have outlived every other thing that's here and here they still are. And for our measly little time, we can't really make them do stuff. And you're loving them. I do love them. You're loving them and it just shows in your work. It's work of love. So I have a friend in my hometown whose wife passed away and you came up to his land and with his friend she built an amazingly beautiful stone sculpture and bench where her ashes are laid. Rocks are markers of life and death, wouldn't you agree? They are. They are, yeah. And also I wanted you to talk a little bit about you teach it yesterday tomorrow. I do. Folks can study under you. They can, yes. And once you are my student, you are always stuck with me. So I have this love affair with all of my students where they send me letters and their pictures of the things that they're working on and they get advice and support and challenges to get them on the right track if they've come off the rail. So it's... Go ahead, finish up. I want this thing to not be a secret. I want stone to be something shared and loved. And it used to be a hierarchical system where only masters could do certain things. And in my teaching process and in my life process, I'm the first one who's the willing worker. I'm the first one to not expect someone else to do the mundane tasks. And I want that to be part of the process of how I teach and how I live. And so people coming to learn from me learn the hardest thing to do first. They learn the secret that was the prime secret, how to arch. That's the first thing we do on the first day is learn to arch. And then after that, everything is just mechanics. Well, I want to tell you that when I was 22 years old, we built our stone house. And I went to Starkspur every day to mail a nurse's farm with my son on my back. It was two years old. And my job was to haul the 36 truckloads of stone from Starkspur to the house. So I'm not that strong anymore, but I really can relate to all you. And I think I'm gonna sign up for your course. I would love to study with you. So we're coming to the end of my show. And I also want to mention to my viewers that you do barter for your work. Do you still do that? Do you still barter? From time to time. I also have to support myself. So I do, yeah. Yes, you do. And so I want to, what is your rock solid advice, Thea, for our species as we deal with all the issues facing our futures? Well, when you put it that way, my rock solid advice would be to let you know that nothing is set in stone. And we always have opportunity to change. And we're completely fluid. And we, it's never, never too late. And we got it, we are here. We need to make account. I also want to ask you before I, I say farewell to you. Goodbye for now, just for now. What did you do with the skunk that you caught in your habit? Oh, I understand. You are enjoying my bedroom right now. And it's really great that you don't have the capacity to smell through the internet. The skunk is running free back wherever it came from. And I have essence of skunk for the day. Well, and for you, I'm sure you'll, you know, you'll be fine with that. You are a marvel. You are truly a mother earth. And I do encourage myearthwork.com for my viewers to visit your website. And Thea, I am just delighted to spend time with you and to have you on my show. And I hope to see you in person some day and give you a hug and you may see me at your yesterday tomorrow class until then. But until then, I wanna wish you well, hang on when I hang up here because I'd like to say goodbye to you personally. And to my viewers, I wanna thank you for being a part of our show today with Thea Alvin. And I will see you again soon. So have a wonderful day and be well.