Bloomington elementary students learn to carve limestone
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) - At 12:30 p.m. every weekday, a group of sixth-grade students sweep into Binford Elementary's stone carving studio like a whirlwind. They sign in at a table and hurry to pick up their favorite chisels and to pick out a piece of limestone for the day's project, or return to a block they had not yet finished.
Soon the room is ringing with the sharp notes of hammer on chisel, running under the babble of conversation:
"Mr. Lankford, did you print my word?" ''Did you work on my rock?" ''Mr. Lankford, where's my chisel?"
Terence Lankford takes questions as they come, walking around the room to assist or critique and point students in the right direction, sometimes with a few taps of the hammer himself.
Lankford is Binford Elementary's school social worker.
He started introducing students to stone carving almost a decade ago, offering it as an incentive for a few boys who were having trouble focusing on their schoolwork and needed something active to do with their hands. If they accomplished the work set to them in class, Lankford said, he would teach them how to carve and shape limestone.
He started out with three boys. These days, he can have close to 20 students - all girls, this year - in the workshop during a 30-minute session. Fifth- and sixth-grade students skip their outdoor recess time to come to the workshop, and others start asking when they can join the club as early as the third grade.
Lankford, who also teaches students through the Indiana Limestone Symposium, began learning how to carve stone years ago, after a colleague recommended he pick up a physical activity to help get himself out of a rut. The colleague referred to Carl Jung, one of the founders of analytical psychology, who used to chop wood and carve stone when he was "stuck." Lankford, whose father had taught him to work with his hands at an early age, was already chopping wood. One day, he "picked up the wrong set of tools" and began experimenting with carving, working with Celtic braids and lettering. It quickly became a passion.
"It's a lost art," he said, "and the only way to regain a lost art is to get exposed to it and have someone show you how it's done."
For their first project each year, Lankford has students choose a word that describes the most important thing in their life: a virtue that "anchors you to who you are and who you want to be." Most students choose words like "love," ''friendship," ''trust" and "courage." Lankford's own office is decorated with the word "happiness," inscribed in limestone blocks in a dozen different languages, including Arabic, French and a regional Native American language. Students can spend days or weeks on their chosen word, staring at it, contemplating it, as they tackle the stone for the first time.
First, students print the word in a font they like, using a word processor. Then, using carbon paper, they trace the word onto the stone and begin carving. The overall process involves chipping, filing and several rounds of waxing and sanding before the piece is completed.
After their first word, students are free to turn their efforts to other projects. One is carving an Indiana University logo, while another shapes the Batman symbol. Yet another carves a stone marker for their family dog. One student's block, lacking only a few more coats of wax, reads "#BLESSED."
This month, Hazel Stringer was carefully chipping away the outline of a treble clef to go in her home's garden alongside her first word, which was "family."
"My family is a musical family, and I wanted to represent that," said Hazel, who plays the piano and cello. She had been working on the clef for about two weeks, going very slowly around the design's delicate curves.
"It started out really hard, because I'd never done it before," she said of her intricate project. "But if you come every day, it gets really easy."
Hazel started stone carving just this year after a few friends suggested she give it a try. She had seen the projects displayed around school before but had never attempted it herself. Now, several weeks after picking up her first chisel, she's asking her family for a stone carving kit for Christmas.
"It's something I look forward to every day," she said.
Across the room, Sydney Alwine used a toothbrush to apply her fourth layer of wax to the project she's been working on for two months: a block that says "American Veteran," her uncle's birthday present. Sydney joined the stone carvers last year, in fifth grade, and fell in love with it right away. She had tried a few sports and other activities, but when she started carving, something "clicked." The first word she carved was "hope."
"It's calming," she said. "Sometimes, when I'm just stressed about something, it calms me down. When you're hitting the rock, it's like you're hitting your anger."
This was one of Lankford's aims when he started the club, he said. By its nature, stone carving demands focus and "stick-to-it-ive-ness" to see a project through, in addition to a good bit of elbow grease. As students see their physical progress, they grow more confident.
When a student finishes a piece, Lankford has the whole class gather around to critique it, helping students learn how to give and take constructive criticism and to strive for excellence. If a carving could be sharper or needs more wax and sanding to make it shine, he often has the student keep working at it. It's not always comfortable, he said, but it's how you grow.
"I don't treat them like they're little kids," Lankford said. "I treat them like they're young stone carvers. It's been a source of pride for a lot of kids."
When it comes to the stone-carving lessons, Lankford is a one-man show. He retrieves the stone himself, choosing blocks from castoffs from Dave Fell and Pat Fell-Barks at B.G. Hoadley Quarries, who donate the stone they can't use for Lankford's students.
Lankford carefully examines each block for cracks and then transports his selections back to the workshop, which is in Binford's storage room, with spare desks and tables and other unused items. He has already made three trips this year, bringing about 30 blocks back each time, and is due for a fourth soon.
As for the tools, he purchased many of them himself. At least one student brings her own tools, and occasionally, he gets help from Binford's parent-teacher organization. Once, a parent of a club member donated a few tables made of scrap wood.
At the end of the recess period, Lankford practically has to chase students out of the workshop as they try to put finishing touches on their pieces. Many of them don't want the period to end, and Lankford knows how they feel. He says the club's session is the high point of his day.
"These things will last one second if they drop them, or they'll last 100 years or longer," he said. "That's a legacy. There aren't many things in life you get to make a mark on like that."
___
Source: The (Bloomington) Herald-Times, http://bit.ly/2fU58Gn
___
Information from: The Herald Times, http://www.heraldtimesonline.com