Before the tool touches the stone, there is research. Photographs, film — a fish moving through water, a peacock turning in light, a swallow banking against the wind. I don't look for anatomy. I look for movement. The way a tail curves at the exact moment of a turn. The angle of a wing a second before the bird finds the thermal and rises. This is what needs to be inside the stone — not the animal in stillness, but the animal in motion.

The drawings that follow are a search. The hand tries different gestures, different positions, until one feels like it could survive the translation into mineral.

Then comes the stone. The first cut.

It never looks right. The image that was certain in my head recedes, and the question is whether that was the right movement and whether this can be recovered. Sometimes it cannot, and the piece becomes something else. Usually it can. What follows is the part I do this for: I want to see what is inside this particular stone.

That has not changed since the first one.