Site Work and Stone

The Site

​In January 1999 my husband David Thorndike and I moved to Jamestown, and I immediately began to imagine how to engage the one-acre site. I kept a journal, Book of [THIS] Place, which detailed my observations and our activity there. I began carving words in marble in 2000 and continued to place stones around this site, with the goal of creating a contemplative garden. After nearly a decade of this work, I published Book of This Place: The Land, Art, and Spirituality. While visitors came intermittently, the site was formerly open to the public at the summer solstice each year. I closed the site in Fall 2015, with a ritual titled "Closing This Place" (detailed under Performance). 

The name "Ivydell" was given by residents in the 1940s:
I. V. Yarous and his wife Della.