This Morning’s Meditation: From Granite to Stone
If you were born in NH, the landscape is carved in your bones. The Granite State—its mountains and stubborn winters lead children to believe that permanence is a virtue. We Granite Staters like how the granite cliffs have stood unmoved for centuries, as if they are guardians of a truth too old to be questioned.
So, moving from the Granite State to a place called Stone Mountain, GA feels a bit like swapping one immovable symbol for another.
But there are differences. The first thing you might notice in Stone Mountain is the softness. The air is warmer, the rain gentler, and the people speak with a slow, melodic drawl that seems to stretch time. The mountain itself looms; its face etched with figures from an ugly history. Unlike the granite cliffs back home, this stone seemed to carry a weight not of nature, but of memory—complicated, contested, and alive in the conversations of the town.
I paint there often. It has been fun exploring Stone Mountain Park to find just the right spots to paint. A week or so ago, my artist friend Estelle and I walked onto the site of The Quarry. It was a beautiful blue-sky day, and we chatted and relaxed as much as we painted, so we did not finish our paintings.
Back in the studio, I was finishing my piece and had a sudden insight. I realized I grew up in a place where stone meant permanence and ended up in a place where stone meant change—where history was carved, challenged, and reimagined.
We are reimagining a lot about our country right now. We have voted to challenge and reimagine how we live in community with one another. We looked at this era that seemed carved in stone and found it is not. It is breakable after all. We can quarry something beautiful from what seemed to be impenetrably ugly even days ago. I am so very proud of voting Americans. It was hard, but we had it in us to work together for change.
I guess, sometimes, the hardest rock to break is the one inside ourselves.
The Quarry
Pastel on Velvet
2026, 9 x 12
https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/barb-jaquith
