The History of the Stone Game

by Leslie Schwing

“The Stone Game” evolved as a creative method of inquiry by friend, Janet Young and myself. We were on a self-styled retreat from the world, camping in a cottage by a river. Our “theme” for the retreat was ENERGIES. Janet and I were using many methods learned in earlier work and as usual, were inventing methods of our own as well. We would test these methods, then take back to try with our group.

This day we decided we would take a long walk with our question, putting attention in our hands, and periodically stopping to read Beelzebub. We were to collect, arbitrarily, whatever came into our path that captured our attention, as long as we could put it in our pockets. When we returned, several hours later, our pockets were full and we were still not satisfied with any answer to our question (understanding ENERGIES).

We emptied our pockets onto a table outside, overlooking the river, and looked at our finds. We began separating them by categories (Janet is a scientist, and this was a logical place for her to begin). Then we began combining them (As an artist, this was my logical next step). Soon we were totally enveloped in a creative world where these objects had taken on a life of their own and were telling us a story. Our conversation during this accelerated period of the process naturally rekindled the initial inquiry of the day, and by moving the objects and through dialogue between the objects, and us we began to see into this idea of “Energies”.

By the end of the light of day we reluctantly went inside to light the fire, leaving our little world behind us. It occurred to us, later by the fire, recapitulating our day (Recapitulation being part of the process we used in these retreats) that our moments of genuine insight occurred as a result of the little game we had played with the sticks and stones. I had used a process of movement of objects earlier in my life, during my thesis days as Fine Arts student. In that time of my life I lived near the ocean, and would take daily collection walks, then arrange my findings in an empty room. The process of creating these ritualistic environments would stimulate the next painting in my thesis series. I used these temporary installations as generators for ideas.

Suddenly the long thought window opened and I began to see the connection again between creativity and the process of moving objects. It then occurred to us that perhaps we should formulate the process and try it again with the intention of creating a Game/Tool that we could use with others. The development of the finished form of the Stone Game was honed by many trials and experiments with our group and Bob Gerber, fellow experimenter. The addition of the “mark making” as part of the game structure evolved during this process.

This was the birth of the STONE GAME.