Introduction: Alchemy Stones Joins the Steemit Art and Creative Community!

Greetings Steemit!

Welcome to "Alchemy Stones!"

As a point of clarification Alchemy Stones are my creative and artistic outlet; they have been for a little over ten years.

Some of my most recent stones...

Some of you who see this may already know me as long-time Steemian @denmarkguy, which is my normal username as a writer, here. I created this "alt account" for a couple of reasons:

1. To not clutter my personal feed with a bunch of art posts
2. To use the Steem blockchain as a place to keep track of my work
3. To have a separate account supporting commerce on the Steem blockchain
4. To become part of the growing Artist/Creatives community on Steemit
5. To create a new free-standing blog to refer people to, for general awareness building

About Alchemy Stones

I have always been fascinated by geometric patterns; in nature, in design... and what I often see in my mind's eye.

From a purely artistic standpoint, I never had much aptitude. Any attempts at figurative drawing resulted in dogs that looked mostly like a blob with a stick at each corner; people looked like a different sort of blob, also with a stick at each corner. Attempts at sculpture and clay were essentially "art lumps."

But geometrics somehow made sense to me, and I was probably no more than nine or ten when I started "decorating" my homework, margins of books, my desk and various other places with geometric doodles.

The slightly weird thing about that is that I actually was pretty crap at actual geometry. I just liked the way things looked, along with such ideas as "creating the illusion of curvature with straight lines."

Yes, I guess I was pretty nerdy!

As a teenager, I could often be found trying to emulate the patterns I'd drawn with my Spirograph as a kid, and I was fascinated by geometric stained glass church windows and particularly Eastern mandala designs and "sacred geometry" like the Flower of Life and Fibonacci Spirals.

Ever-evolving Scribbles

My earlier doodles were almost exclusively done with very fine tipped black markers and pens on sturdy white paper; there was no particular structure or plan to anything I did... and I never really considered anything I did to be "art," although many people seemed to appreciate the outcome as bookmarks.

Sometimes people would say "You should really get these framed!" and I would pretty much laugh nervousely and brush the idea aside.

And so, I went forth for many years, not really considering what I was doing to be "art," or even creative in any sort of formal fashion.

A collection of finished pieces in various sizes, circa 2015

Life's a Beach!

In 2006,we moved here to our little seaside town of Port Townsend, Washington... which is basically surrounded by water on three sides.

I have always loved walking on the beach and picking up interesting things found along the way... and now living only a few hundred yards from the beach, my childhood beach combing tendencies returned. I have always liked flat smooth rocks, so quite a few of those found their way back home.

About a couple of years later, I first explored the idea of painting my intricate little patterns on a stone. In part, I was encouraged by a friend who was looking for a "meditation object," who wondered out loud how it might work if I put one of my mandalas onto a smooth stone.

So I tried.

And it was surprisingly harder than I had expected. In actuality, most stones are not nearly as smooth as we think... paint and paint pens work fine for pretty general coloring projects, but not so much for super accurate tiny lines. So that took a bit lot of experimentation.

Fast Forward to Now...

In the interest of keeping this introduction to a manageable length, the early "experiments" ended up being successful enough — and admired enough — that "Alchemy Stones" were born and have become the mainstay of my artistic/creative output.

Of course, this is all a far more complex story than this post allows... but that will become the subject matter of future posts.

What you can expect to find — should you choose to start following this blog — will be various stories and updates about what we're doing (and I say "we" because my wife is very much part of the process — it's a bit of a joint venture), with both work and outside shows and events... as well as a gradual "cataloging" of work, along with the opportunity to acquire anything you see that might appeal to you.

I appreciate your attention and interest!

Oh, and last but not least... here's a bit of an attempt at "verification."

I probably wouldn't have that many, unless I was also the person making them....

2019.01.22 AS-TXT-001
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