Thea Alvin

In my post last night I wrote about the work of Thea Alvin.

I figured since I was talking about her and linking some of her videos that I should drop her an email. Turns out she either has a email enabled phone or was near a computer because she got right back to me.

Turns out it was her birthday.  I felt bad for taking her away from whatever she was doing, but I was glad she was ok with the post I made.  I told her I hoped she was surrounded by good people and good food.  Given what I have seen of her videos I imagine she has a number of friends who are very much salt of the earth folks.   I could be wrong, but it takes a certain person to stomp in mud barefoot in the cold rainy weather we have been having in new england recently.  And in my limited experience with this type of person....I imagine them to be great folks.  

This makes the second Thea I know and both live unconventional lives doing the things they love to do.  Maybe its in the name?  

Stone Structures - Thea Alvin - and my trip to Ireland

This morning Re-nest put up an article about the work of Thea Alvin.

I was immediately captured by her work.  Mostly because I come from a long line of Italian stone masons and I feel like stone is in my blood.  But its something I wish I knew more about as well.  Her stone arches are a fantastic display of what a mason can do with dry stone structures.  Here is an example of her stone arches.

After pouring through her website and countless videos I kept seeing something in her work that seemed familiar and I could not place it.  Sure I like dry stone work more then the average person but what was I seeing?

And then I saw one of her photos of a capstone roof and here and then it hit me.  Her work reminds me of my trip to Ireland. I was on the Dingle Peninsula and we discovered The Gallarus Oratory.  The Gallarus Oratory is  a dry-stone church dated around 800. Its built in the shape of an overturned boat and it is dry inside after 1211 years.  I quickly ran through my photo folders and pulled a few examples.

Here is the Oratory from the front door.  I needed to be close enough to 

get the joints clearly but that made me too close to get the whole structure.

This is the top of the doorway from inside.

 This last one is inside looking up at the roof above the doorway.