Megalith singular is a giant stone.
Megaliths plural is an elemental art form.
An arrangement of stones can serve many functions.
Tombs, temples, castles, gates and walls all started with stones.
Stones can be stacked as trail markers and cairns.
Stones can be aligned in sacred circles or stand as sentinels.
What makes megaliths unique among stones is their prominence.
Megaliths invite observation.

A life is a journey and every tale has a trail.
As a sculptor I consider my Megaliths as metaphors for signal events.
Ultimately they are stately sentinels that should invite you, the viewer
to give them meaning within the context of your own life’s journey.
What spirits inhabit them is a mystery. There is no correct answer.
My goal is to stimulate your imagination.

I do not work with real stones, but with high density foam.
Often the foam has a skin of clay which adds another textural variable.
I cut the foam with a Japanese saw with a long blade and short handle.
I also rip the foam apart with my hands which allows for spontaneous shapes.
I call my style Geological Cubism. My cones, spheres, cylinders and cubes
are perhaps irregular, but in the end I have what I call a palette of shapes
whose facets and fractures all serve a dynamic balancing act.

Once the foam shapes are stacked into a satisfying composition,
I spray-paint the foam gray to seal the surface for mold-making.
The blue silicone mold is just one step among many in the lost-wax process.
Bronze is a chameleon medium and once the metal is patinated it can
imitate many materials such as field stones or clays like terracotta.

Sometimes my Megaliths suggest abstracted portraits of people or animals.
Sometimes they recall the Scholar Stones or Spirit Rocks of Chinese gardens.
In other words they are in miniature the greater world made small for contemplation.

And should anyone care to have any of them enlarged,
as monuments they would take their place in a very long history
of stacking: stones, words, beads... poems for the ear and poems for the eye...
every journey has its story and every story leaves a trail...

Roger Arvid Anderson
San Francisco, November 14, 2017