Conversations with Stone

This work consists of two large-scale drawings developed for Conversations with Stone at Newcastle Cathedral. The drawings are based on geological thin-section slides of the stone used in the cathedral’s construction. Thin sections are microscopic cross-sections of stone that reveal mineral structure, texture, and geological time when viewed under magnification.

Working from these microscopic images, I translated the material structure of the cathedral stone into large-scale drawings using ink, charcoal, and pastel. The process shifts the viewer’s perspective between geological deep time and architectural presence, moving from the microscopic to the bodily scale.

Rather than representing the cathedral as an architectural object, the drawings attend to its geological composition, foregrounding the stone as material witness. The work explores how built heritage contains layered histories of extraction, transformation, and endurance, inviting slower, more attentive ways of seeing stone as both structure and substance.