Cairn (proposed) 2020

Dimensions: 18’ x 10‘ diameter

Medium: Dry stacked local stone

Client: Ramapo College

Budget: $160,000

Collaborating artist: Michael Weitzner, master stonewaller

The dry stacked stone walls that define the landscape around Ramapo College are a testimony to centuries of human labor. Each boulder, too heavy for one person, was lifted and placed by people working in a collective effort to clear the fields to grow food to share with their communities; each generation striving not only for their own survival, but for a more secure existence for the next one.Like these stacks of stone, a library is a repository of cumulative layers of human knowledge and experience, recorded and protected for subsequent generations to build on for the betterment of mankind. Universities are one of civilization’s primary sites where this knowledge is excavated and reexamined to create the foundation for new layers of ideas.