After years of staggering back from shore walks with arms full of stones, I stopped finding any that grabbed my attention. Instead, I started to notice interesting pieces of wood that, at first, echoed the shapes of the stones I had been collecting. Over a number of years, I had filled a whole room with wood. Having worked with the stones for 12 years, in 2016 I started working from the twigs. Where as the stones were monuments to matter, the twigs are monuments to life. Again, the photos and sculptures of the stones and the twigs honor what nature, rather than civilization, has formed.

— Ned Smyth