Local artist Gordon Stone has fused his love of poetry with his love of photography in his first book, Nature Speaks Are You Listening, which features photos of nature from the Algoma District.
Stone was joined by his daughter and granddaughter during the launch of the book at the Art Gallery of Algoma Saturday.
“I was drawn to this time of night,” said Stone, while showing SooToday a photo of a sunset taken at the boardwalk in downtown Sault Ste. Marie. “It only lasts a couple of seconds - you’ve got to be quick.”
Stone’s granddaughter, Valerie King, began helping her grandfather put the book together in January 2018.
King says that she acted as ‘his hands’ through the process, delving into all the hard copies of poetry that Stone has amassed since he was a child.
“It was my job to take some of those pieces of paper and translate them into an electronic format for him, and then add his photography,” she said. “He became a photographer later in life, so the photos he captured...he wanted them to be universal.”
“He wanted anybody to get anything out of them that touched them,” she continued. “He wanted to inspire people to be creative in their own way.”
Stone has some issues finding his words and getting around these days, but tells SooToday that many of his written and visual works revolve around noticing the subtle details found in nature that often go overlooked and unnoticed.
“Now he has what he calls his swan song, and this is his offering to the world - of all that he sees in the world,” said King. “He has a very rich spirituality – very, very deep Christianity that has guided him his whole life – so in everything he sees spirit, and nature for him is like a church.”
“That’s what he wanted to bring to people, and it was my pleasure and honour to help him do that.”
Stone and his granddaughter even managed to find some common ground while working on the book together over the past year.
“He grew up in the hippie era – I would’ve loved to,” King said. “We sort of enjoyed that thing, and because he chooses to write in a way that completely eliminates punctuation and is just free-flowing words, it really spoke to the rebel in me to kind of see his rebellious nature come out.”
“He adamantly refused to write English the way it was intended to be written, refused to. And that was glorious for me.”
Now, King says, it’s her grandfather’s time to bask in the spotlight during the official launch of his Nature Speaks Are You Listening.
“It’s such a special moment to watch him celebrate this, to sort of stand back and let him have his moment in glory,” she said. “He revels in stuff like this, he’s always loved to be in the spotlight.”