Natick sculptor and garden designer finds inspiration in nature

By Deborah Burke Henderson
Contributing Writer

NATICK – On a recent visit to Carrara, Italy, artist Karin Stanley acquired new carving techniques from master sculptor Boutros Romhein that she now applies in her home studio while finding what surprises lie within stone.

“Working stone is a slow process of discovery,” Stanley said, chipping away at a chunk of marble. “A story lies within each piece that is only revealed as the work deepens. I never know what to expect.”

The dance between light and shadow
She admits to being an umbraphile—loving the dance between light and shadow. She loves quarries, finds old stones that speak to her, and works them. Entranced by ancient landscapes, history, and hieroglyphs, the award-winning Irish-born sculptor and garden designer has a reverence for megalithic art and Celtic archeology, which is integral to her work.

A recent sculpture called “Alluminata Umbra,” inspired by April’s total solar eclipse, is in Stanley’s terms “a diaphanous monolith that explores the dynamics of light and flow through translucence and shadow. The umbra surface creates flowing forms through the hieroglyphs that projects them into alternate and contrasting shape-shifting forms from noon light to moonlight.” 

Stanley sees gardens as extensions of our spirits, our sanctuaries. She uses the term “anam loci,” a blend of Latin and Gaelic, meaning “soul place.” She is infatuated with the magical, mysterious, and mystical.

To uniquely showcase art and spirit in gardens, she developed “Creating the Inner Quiet Garden Room”—a focal point in the garden tours and lectures she delivers to audiences at flower shows, arboretums, and garden clubs. Essentially, she helps gardeners discover the joy that can be found when fully accessing their green spaces through the placement of sculpture and ornament.

When commissioned, she likes to work closely with clients, involving them in every aspect of their outdoor room and garden design. She gathers all their interests from colors, poetry, music, and inspirational elements. As well as from images on their travels to magical childhood memories, she distills it all, and along with her intuition and compelling knowledge of horticulture, the gardens emerge.

Ancient pathways inform modern art
Spherical, carved stones and monoliths are a main theme, serving as ornamental elements in her own gardens, lush with plants, bushes, and trees cultivated nearly thirty years ago as she transformed a desolate, hilly yard into a meditative sanctuary and dreaming space.
Finding great comfort in gardens, Stanley said she revels in sharing these tranquil spaces with others, showing off the variety of flora and intricately carved sculptural work that dominates the property.

Garden accents include a labyrinth path, four- and five-foot stone monoliths, or stelas, marked with Celtic hieroglyphs or Ogham (pronounced “om”), an ancient Irish alphabet using hatches and lines. A vertical garden mirror impersonates water. A giant, polished steel portal not only invites the visitor inward on a journey of exploration and reverie but reflects a 100-foot arc of sunlight at certain times of day.

“I love creating art in a three-dimensional world. I always have; I just keep changing my media,” she confided with a smile. “I visualize a modern interpretation of ancient ideas. This isn’t something you learn in art school.”

As she continues to experiment with material and form, Stanley has eagerly cast some of her signature spheres in bronze, aluminum, and resin and is working on a new, six-foot stela project in art plexiglass that will withstand weather and can be illuminated night or day.

“It is so exciting to witness the transformative alchemy of new materials and dimensions and directions,” she stated.

Stanley also creates both life stones and memorial stones, often engraved with an ancient hieroglyphic expression—the spiral—which represents the continuity of life. While life stones honor a loved one celebrating a milestone event, memorial stones are healing objects that resonate through her to the family involved.

“Everyone loves to hold a rock,” she noted. “I am honored that my work can, in some small way, help people grieve.”

Move to the United States
When she was just a young girl, Stanley loved sitting in her mother’s garden, amidst the amazing display of colors and textures, and that love became her passion. At eight, she started writing poetry. After copying poems by William Wordsworth, she wrote her own response poems and illustrated them.

Stanley lived and studied in Paris and spent time briefly in the Middle East. She emigrated from Ireland to America in 1985 bringing a collection of original knitwear to a prominent New York designer. Her work was based on traditional Irish designs, but she converted to using silk, cotton, and leather in her handiwork. She fingered an old photograph showing a sampling of pieces and immediately recognized familiar features and shapes in her fiber art that have predominated her ongoing creations of water fountains, monoliths, and spheres.
She recalled a woman back then noting, “You really are an artist, darling, because if I cannot wear it, I can hang it on the wall.” A compliment Stanley still cherishes decades later.

Stanley returns to Ireland regularly as she finds the experience and the landscape “restorative and forever enchanting, keeping my dreaming spirit nourished and full.”

Passionate about learning
Stanley graduated from the Radcliffe Landscape Design and History program in 2000 where she expanded her working knowledge of horticulture and design. Her thesis focused on creating an Irish garden in a Celtic landscape and a Celtic garden in the Irish countryside. This work has served as the foundation for numerous lectures about evolving garden history through the centuries.

“I believe the core principles of art and garden design both involve balance, proportion, rhythm, and focus which come together to create a complementary and dynamic presentation, elevating each other,” Stanley observed.

As her love of nature flourishes within, Stanley has also been integrating her poetry and sculpture together while exploring new dimensions within both disciplines.

Viewing opportunities
One of Stanley’s largest and most significant sculptures to date, “The Celtic Shadow Sundial,” was featured at a Garden in the Woods show called “Rock On” in Framingham and later moved to the Massachusetts Horticultural Society (MHS), where she is a member.
Her sculptures are on display in healing gardens, institutions, and numerous private collections around the world. Here in New England, her work is featured in the Marsh-Billings Rockefeller National Historical Park in Woodstock, Vermont, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, and the Old Frog Pond Farm Sculpture Walk in Harvard.

You may have walked her “Lunar Crescent Path” at Elm Bank in Wellesley or visited “The Celtic Goddess of the Seasons” in the Wellesley College chapel. A commemorative 10-foot “Stela—Nurture” and her garden designs welcome folks to the Carroll School in Lincoln. 

Sculptures are also on display at the Flying Horse Sculpture Exhibit in South Hamilton, and the Cape Cod Museum of Art.

Stanley is a proud member of the New England Sculptors Association (NESA), the oldest in the United States; the National Academy of Women Artists (NAWA), and the American Academy of Women Artists (AAWA). You can see examples of her work online at karinstanley.com.

Crescent Moon Celtic Stela

By Karin Stanley

You were flamed and curved this crescent moon,
and made ready for sky.
Swinging gently, cradling with strength and mystery
like a celestial lullaby.
Can I sit on the edge and hold you tight and look to the Milky Way?
Look up to the halo radiant,
like Philolaus—with his heavenly gaze.
With your craters and valleys, I brought you to earth
to create you to be close by.
Wrapped with the unfurling ferny fractals,
like wispy wings enveloping you.
When I look up each night to follow you round
now I have you by my side.
Your patterns show rivers and oceans,
swirling ovals and caves so deep,
reflecting the light of the sun on your face.
Bowed and luminous, you orbit us,
like a steady friend, to hold and keep.
Firm in the soil your night shadow
reflecting up the sky, your curving
shape settled like a cradled bow.
An ancient continuum swerving,
opening to full night,
bright and beautiful sight.
But your silver sliver of light
fills me with love and strength,
illuminating my inner soulful
and spiritual recycling station.
Month by month you begin
that natural rhythm, as we gaze
upward with wonder and
comfort as we count the days
and you gently appear as we
look for you and where do you lie?
Ah, back and forth, there you are,
the lullaby in the sky. 

RELATED CONTENT:

Sterling artist gives back to the community

Artist/activist Domenic Esposito draws attention to opioid crisis

Author, artist Jackie French Koller turns another page

 

Post Views: 26