100FT
The Blast Zone refers to the section of a quarry that is still actively mined. The processes of drilling, blasting, and removing natural stone leave the land fractured and inhospitable. Despite the environmental consequences, limestone is still one of the most used materials in construction. This installation examines the transmutable property of limestone as both a natural and industrial material.
As an industrial material, limestone carries with it a collective history of the land and people who imprint themselves upon it— a history transformed and detached from its geological origins, inseparable from the development of modern civilization. It is a process that speaks to the dynamic relationship between nature and human creation, where stone moves beyond the land and into cultural material. This transition from raw material to refined architecture reflects both the permanence and adaptability of limestone. Limestone serves as a metaphor for the progress of industrialism itself: a system that relentlessly reshapes raw material into a built landscape.
This constructed installation physically represents a quarry— becoming a space, where material presence and absence create an overwhelming, almost sublime experience. This space elicits the awe-inspiring feeling when confronted with vastness beyond human comprehension. The sheer scale— stone displaced, transported, and reshaped— exceeds ordinary perception. One witnesses where the land is carved away and exposing the deep voids where millions of tons of rock once rested.
The paradox is that limestone defines so much of the built world, yet its point of origin remains void, a reminder of what was taken— this contrast between presence and absence, between what remains and what is removed. The stone, which once rested undisturbed in the earth for millions of years, is suddenly claimed, assigned value, and given a role in the human world. It becomes a cornerstone of architecture, industry, and art, far from the landscape that shaped it. The moment it is removed, it ceases to be part of the earth’s continuous geological narrative and instead becomes a cultural artifact. Yet, even in its new state, time, weather, and pollution wear it down, softening edges, eroding, and gradually dissolving. The same stone that can stand for millennia will eventually succumb to the elements, marking a slow but inevitable return to nature; something seemingly permanent is, in fact, transient- as is this installation.