Sun Stone
Paul Schneider
Licht, Stein, Schatten
Paul Schneider will feel very much at home here. He will understand the mathematics of our monuments and the minds of their makers. He will know that a kindred spirit designed the roofbox at Newgrange which conducts the rays of the rising sun to light the innermost chamber at the winter solstice. He will understand why the tiny windows in the early monasteries were angled to catch the first light of dawn so that the resurrection could be commemorated in an appropriate manner. He will love our granite and the way craftsmen worked it through the centuries. He will delight in the play of light and shade on our high crosses and the mystic power of our standing stones and cromlechs.
He loves stone and he loves light and sees stone as potentially translucent. Through his art he allows light to penetrate stone and sometimes by an infusion of light he creates an illusion of weightlessness and transparence in solid blocks of stone.
Though his work is profoundly personal it is often evocative of sun-worship and of primitive civilisations, on one hand, while in another sense it reflects pre-occupations as diverse as those of the Pre-Socratic philosophers and the 20th century pioneers of art, like the cubists, or of Picasso, Moore and Arp. An intriguing aspect of Schneider’s relationship with stone is his respect for it as a memory of the earth, Nature’s memory. This almost religious respect for stone, together with his emphasis on light and shadow as ways in which we chart the passing of our earth time, make me think of Schneider as a metaphysical artist for whom nature is a sort of primeval sacrament, and whose work nudges me towards questions of lifes meaning and its mystery.
Having Paul Schneider in Carlow is a coup for Éigse and a privileged opportunity for Irish people to familiarise themselves with the work of this fascinating artist.
Caoimhín O’Neill 1993
Paul Schneider creating Sonnerstein (Sun Stone) in the grounds of Carlow College in 1993. It is aligned to catch the summer solstice light rays in its borehole and pierce its own shadow on the western side. Schneider is a life long advocate of public art and his work now is embedded in the DNA of Carlow. You can read more about him and see his other works in the collection in the art/artist sections.