Jo Webb - Dry Stone Waller
24” x 20” / 60.96 x 50.8cm (Edition of 8)
20” x 16” / 50.8 x 40.64cm (Edition of 25)
16” x 12” / 40.64 x 30.48cm (Edition of 50)
The Story.
Jo’s walls wind through the rolling Cotswold countryside. In 35 years of walling she’s laid miles and miles of walls, containing tens of thousands of stones. It’s a craft that’s an interesting mixture of hard labour and artistry, where the placing of stones becomes instinctive.
“You should never pick up a stone twice, you just know where it should go, where it feels right for it to sit. I don’t like to wear gloves as I need to feel the stones. I like working so near to the earth, with such a natural material, and it’s important to me that I’m following in the footsteps of wallers over the centuries, not just by building new walls, but also in repairing walls that are sometimes hundreds of years old.”
She often finds things left in old walls, such as an old bronze buckle, a bone button, or a sweet wrapper from the sixties, all left by previous wallers.
“It’s almost a tradition to leave a little something in one of your walls, not so much as a signature, but as a mark of time.”