Seeing Into Stone

Book excerpt: Set in a ghost town in California's Mojave Desert, Seeing Into Stone: A Sculptor's Journey is a memoir about the author's struggle with flaws in her vision, her carvings and her new marriage as she searches for her identity as an artist. Through her fifteen-year apprenticeship with Gordon Newell, a wise and patient stone sculptor, she learns that carving stone and wood can be understood as a metaphor for life: go with the grain and not against it; trust that the form inside will emerge in its own good time; and realize that understanding comes slowly, chip by chip.