Diary of a Rock Balancer ::

Stone Balance Art created and photographed by Michael Grab — 12 March 2016 — Texas, USA ::

Balanced in Llano, Texas at Llano Earth Art Festival. it only lasted about 30-40 minutes on a still morning, but long enough for many to see and contemplate. My favorite rocks in this immediate area were the same kind used in the small 3-rock slink holding the top. As for hardness, they seemed the bosses. Their surfaces held integrity most through the finest micro-adjustments. And they also had a decent bit of friction, allowing them to hang at steeper counterbalance angles under relatively gigantic top-weight.Despite the hardness of the 3-rock combo, careful forethought with placement was still crucial because the top rock was hard, but substantially softer than the 3 below. Kinda like with photography, i wanna shoot as close to a perfect frame/exposure as possible so as to maximize integrity of the source (the balance), and minimize post-adjustments. It mostly comes down to how well one can train their brain (and bracing hand) to mimic the precise zero-point signature of any given weave of rocks before placing the top, and then find zero before too many adjustments damage the integrity of softer contact points.