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Silverpoint Drawings: Various Illustrations: Watercolor Art: Sculptures: |
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Kansas ‘Fencepost’ Limestone: After I had been carving marble for about three years, I met another inspirational stone sculptor Pete ‘Fritz’ Felten of Hays, Kansas. Pete is also a self-taught stone sculptor, using Kansas ‘Fence post’ Limestone since the 1960s. This type of limestone is a little softer to cut than marble. Kansas limestone has a gentle yellow color and often filled with sea shell fossils from when the Kansas area was a sea bed millions of years ago. (Pete Felten has shown me that leaving the fossils intact in the sculpture really adds a cool and unique dimension to the design. I agree and feel lucky when I’m removing material and a little sea shell appears!) If possible, I try to leave the shell fossil in place.
Settlers in the 1800s and early 1900s quarried the limestone from the few rock outcroppings and dry lake beds in the vast prairies of Kansas to make fence posts since wood fence posts were a rare commodity in Kansas. Many contemporary artists now use the reclaimed, broken pieces of discarded limestone fence posts to create their works. You can see Pete’s sculptures at http://www.kansastravel.org/stonegallery.htm |
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