Page 8 - Demo

8|September 2019 Mark
Herrington
Continued from page 1
During the mid 1990s, while still fabricating countertops, Mark had begun doing sculpture work for himself and getting a lit- tle more creative. He also wanted to get back to doing furniture de- sign, and began wondering how to marry big pieces of stone to big pieces of wood. It wasn’t that easy, he explained.
“By 2005, I was getting very ex- hausted by the level of work I was doing, and realized I could do one of two things. I could go full bore on the countertops and do really well, or scale back and feed my creative side. I chose the latter, and it was an evolution from 2004 to 2007. Part of it was just getting the confidence that I could at least make a living, and decided that I was going to do both artwork and countertops, at least for a while. I figured that if I could do just one countertop job per month, I could pay all of my expenses and work on my art, but it was really hard scaling back, because it’s hard to say no to the clients I’d had for years.”
As it turned out, while Mark was in the process of scaling back his client list and getting down to one countertop job a month, it’s also when the financial crash came and began doing the culling for him. “This area being on the fringe, the work died, and I did not do an- other countertop for a year after that.
“At the time, I just figured that I’m now on the accelerated plan of dropping my clients, and by the time they started coming back, it was easy to say no. Moreover, I was having some success making and selling my art around 2011, and realized that this is truly what I want to do, regardless of how much money I make doing countertops.”
Above: Herrington’s studio is located by the historic Orcutt granite quarry, which opened in 1889.
Right: Herrington at work at the 2017 Boothbay Sympo- sium. This biannual sympo- sium brings together Maine artists and an international guest to work in Maine gran- ite every other summer.
Slippery rock Gazette
Material is Just a Stone’s Throw Away
Having grown up in Maine, Mark’s father was an avid out- doorsman, and almost every weekend they would be hunting or fishing somewhere. “I was al- ways out amongst stones and na- ture, and loved those rocky places on the streams where the big trout holes are. It’s also when I fell into the idea of using local glacial er- ratics, because they were avail- able right here. (Editor’s note: A glacial erratic is a rock that dif- fers in size and type from what is native to an area.) Glacial errat- ics actually became my entry in to form, so that as soon as I picked up the canvas (the stone), it wasn’t blank. Once I started getting into that, it all started coming along pretty easily, and then it was just a matter of bringing in a slightly more aesthetic vocabulary. I like using Basalts, because I like the color contrast of the polish on the skin, particularly when I get them from the local gravel pit, because it goes orange due to the oxide. Whereas, if I get them on the beach, it’s more like slate, and cleaned.
”I also started getting into col- ors and that’s kind of where I am now. I spend a lot of time scout- ing for materials that are interest- ing. There is the outer form of the
stone, the inner mineral form of the stone – what it will look like when it is processed – and there is the form of the shape that I im- pose on it. Trying to balance all of those is very interesting.”
Franklin and Sullivan are not only granite towns, but also have a bunch of gravel pits. Ninety percent of the sculpture in Mark’s showroom came from these pits, from stones that had washed down river from Baxter State Park. “When you go in to these pits after a rain, it looks like a gumball machine,” explained Mark. “It’s really cool. We also have Ellsworth schist here that is really nice. I do like working with marble, but I cannot afford it, and local granite is not that hard. But my favorite stone is always the one I’m working with at the time. Sometimes I’ll pick a stone think- ing that it’s one thing, and it winds up being chert. Chert is really hard, it doesn’t like diamonds, and it takes twice as long to carve as basalt, a stone that diamonds do love. I don’t use anything from my own quarry. It’s much easier for me to just go over to my friend Conrad Smith, who operates the Sullivan Granite Company, and buy stone from him. The quarry is right across the bay.”
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