Whitney Brown

Dry-Stone Waller

I didn’t mean to start doing this. I was going to be a curator. 

That is, until an artist and an artisan from Wales completely changed my mind about who I might be. While working on my Master’s in Folklore at the University of North Carolina, I spent summers staffing the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. In 2009, a blacksmith and a dry-stone waller came to build their country’s portion of the festival site and to represent their respective crafts to the public.  I had never seen anything like these two.  I was in awe, and they took me under their wings. To my shock and delight, they invited me to take a break from graduate school and instead come to Wales to live and work with them for a few months.  

I could not get on a plane fast enough!  I spent that fall and winter working alongside them, and I quickly realized that I no longer wanted simply to document and present craft as an academic—I wanted to do it. I was happy. I had found a new kind of satisfaction. My first trip to Wales was the biggest "Aha!" moment of my life so far. For better or worse, I knew that my days at a desk were over.

When my time in Wales was up, I came home to finish my Master’s, cooked professionally for a while, and even worked on a small organic farm, but I knew I wasn’t done walling.  After spending an additional two months training in Wales in 2011 and five weeks in 2012, I began building here at home, too. In 2016, I came full circle and built a dry-stone wall at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, where my journey with stone began. I continue to travel to Wales annually to build, learn, and even teach.

Most often, I build using traditional dry-stone methods—no concrete, no re-bar, no fake stone.  I build the same way wallers have been building for centuries.  I will, as needed or requested, work with mortar.  A well-built dry-stone wall can last hundreds of years without the aid of concrete or even mortar (though mortar is appropriate for some structures).  Concrete is not always the answer.  Besides, not dumping concrete in the middle of a wall can do nice things like create bird or toad habitats in a wall's interior.  A wall can be part of an ecosystem. Ever thought of that?

I am open to any project ideas you might have.  Thus far, I have tackled functional farm walls, garden walls, privacy walls, retaining walls, gateways, fire pits, bridges, benches, steps, and pitched (cobbled) walkways and driveways.  I am equally experienced in new construction and restoration/repair. And I am equally interested in sculptural pieces as in functional ones.

Please note that I am phasing out of patios and walkways except for very small ones. My spine is aging, and I have never enjoyed flatwork very much. Better to save myself for the work I love: walls and steps.

Projects are priced individually according to scale, scope, and technical difficulty. Please contact me to learn more and to arrange a site visit.

I am based in the Blue Ridge Mountains in southwest Virginia and the Ozark Mountain in northwest Arkansas, but my work takes me far and wide. I have completed large-scale projects, for instance, in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina, the DC area, and in upstate South Carolina, where I grew up and maintain strong ties. I also continue to volunteer myself on big projects in Wales as often as possible, and lately, I have been heading all the way to Vermont to assist with projects my friend Dan Snow. I will gladly consider projects outside these areas depending on the housing situation, the season, and the compensation. I can do and do travel nationally and internationally to work, and am particularly interested in doing so for historic restoration projects. I remain eager and adventurous, though be advised I am far less likely to sleep in your spare room on an air mattress than I was at 28.

Please contact me with ideas and questions.  I would love to build something for you. 

Whitney
whitney@whitneybrownstone.com