Dan Snow

Dan Snow is an art maker and dry stone craftsman. He creates site-specific, environmental works, builds traditional dry stone constructions and assembles small-scale, stand-alone sculpture for clients in his native Vermont, New England and beyond. His dry stone constructions include fences, pillars, staircases, arches and grandstands. Environmental works include grottos, pavilions and causeways. Sculptures combine stone, wood and metal into three-dimensional fantasy worlds.

Snow has been building with stone since working on an Italian castle restoration in 1972. His career as a professional dry stone waller began in 1976 with field wall repairs and retaining wall constructions. In 1986 and 1994, Snow apprenticed with Master craftsmen wallers in the British Isles.

After thirteen years in the Dry Stone Walling Association of Great Britain’s Craftsman Certification Scheme, Snow achieved his Mastercraftsman certificate in 2000. Dan Snow has instructed many workshops in dry stone walling and lectured on the craft across the USA, in Canada and Great Britain. As a DSWA Examiner he has organized test venues and tested dozens of wallers in the certification scheme.

In 2005 and 2007, Dan Snow was invited by the University of Art and Design, Helsinki to lecture on environmental art and instruct 1-2 weeklong workshops, with Environmental Art Department graduate students, in the Finnish countryside. At Kansas State University, in 2008, Snow presented a slide lecture on his artwork and creative process to a large audience of faculty and students.

In 2001 Snow authored “In the Company of Stone”, published by Artisan, with photographs of his work by Peter Mauss. “Stone Rising,” a film by Camilla Rockwell, released in 2005, captures the spirit of Snow’s constructions and chronicles the process of their creation. “Listening to Stone,” 2008, is Dan Snow’s second book of practical and poetic observations on the walling life.

Dan Snow has appeared at Village Square Booksellers for an author signing. In addition, we've managed his book sales during the Great River Arts Institute stone tours at the Peter and Teddy Berg home on Rice Mountain in Walpole, New Hampshire.

Listening to Stone (Hardcover)

By Dan Snow, Peter Mauss

$23.95

ISBN-13: 9781579653712
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Artisan Publishers, 11/2008

A master craftsman provides us with the timeless wisdom he has gained from heaving and hewing stone. In his highly anticipated second book, Vermonter Dan Snow once again proves that he is not just one of America's premier artisans, but also one of our most articulate voices on the natural world and our relationship to it. Snow's medium is stone: He is the nation's premier drystone wall builder. Schooled in this ancient craft, he painstakingly creates structures as breathtaking as sculpture with nothing but gravity as their glue. In "Listening to Stone," Peter Mauss's tactile photographs of Snow's artistry are matched by the artisan's quietly compelling prose. In a voice as expressive as Annie Dillard's and as informed as John McPhee's, Snow demonstrates astonishing range as he touches on such subjects as geology, philosophy, and community. We learn that stone's grace comes from its unique characteristics--its capacity to give, its surprising fluidity, its ability to demand respect, and its role as a steadying force in nature. In these fast-paced times, Snow's life's work offers an antidote: the luxury of patience, the bounty and quietude of nature, the satisfaction of sweat. "I work with stone," he ultimately tells us, "because stone is so much work."

In the Company of Stone (Paperback)

By Dan Snow, Peter Mauss

Email or please call for price
ISBN-13: 9781579653477
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Artisan Publishers, 1/2007

""Finding stone, choosing it, and letting go of it are the three things a waller does. I'd miss any one of them too much if I asked someone else to do them for me. I may work by myself, but I'm not alone. I'm in the company of stone."" Daniel Snow is a waller, an artisan who builds walls, terraces, caverns, and the occasional sphere or pool out of dry stone. It's an ancient skill-- building with only what the earth provides. No mortar, no nails, nothing to hold his creations together except gravity, an invisible glue he can sense in the stones' "conversations" of squeaks and rumbles. A hollow sound means a void needs to be filled; a solid fit is secured with the sound of a bolt being thrown. Snow's evocative prose and Peter Mauss's richly textured photographs of Snow's work reveal the nuance and beauty of walling-- and of one man's relationship with nature. The result is by turns poetic and practical.