Ken
Ely is a native of Susquehanna County who has been involved
in stone-wall building and restoration since his teenage years.
His other interests include cooking, backpacking, and travel. He
is a member of Woodbourne Forest Preserve Stewardship Committee,
The Sierra Club, and Keystone Trails Association. Ken began rebuilding
fallen stone walls at Woodbourne Orchards in Dimock, PA, for the
Cope family. The walls at Woodbourne revealed to Ken their structure
and the skills of their builders.
While
he builds mostly utilitarian structures, Ken finds a certain artfulness
in fitting stones of varying sizes and shapes together to form
a functional, orderly whole, not unlike Baroque music. Key to
the many rewards of wall-building are the benefits of physical
exertion, the satisfaction of viewing a tangible result of one's
work, and the earthy, subtle coloring of the region's sedimentary
rock, its mosses, and its lichens. It's also important to Ken
that he creates these structures in much the same way that our
predecessors did, using simple human-powered tools.
Ken
founded Good Neighbor Walls in 1996, and has completed projects
in Susquehanna, Wyoming, Luzerne, Bradford, and Broome (NY) counties.
Beyond restoring old and building new walls, he presents slide
programs about local walls and conducts wall-building workshops.
Ken received a fellowship grant in 2009 from the Pennsylvania
Council on the Arts, and has been selected as a 2010 and 2011
Commonwealth Speaker by the Pennsylvania Humanities Council. Additionally,
his work will be featured at various locations in the state in
2010 and 2011 with the "Making it Better" tour, a traveling
exhibition of Folk Arts in Pennsylvania Today.
This
year Ken will be demonstrating on his own property, for the first
time, in Dimock Township. The project is a new retaining wall
along the edge of the driveway. Stop by to talk about your projects
or to discuss general techniques or history. Please be aware that
the map symbol in this year's Studio Tour map is incorrectly placed,
although the text is accurate in terms of directions. The site
is located 2.2 miles southeast of Dimock on S.R. 3023, the road
that runs from Dimock to Nicholson. To find it, proceed to Dimock
on S.R. 29 (about 6 miles south of Montrose). In Dimock, turn
onto S.R. 3023 directly across from Baker's Garage. The site is
2.2 miles from Route 29, on the left. Watch for the pink arrows.
You can contact Ken by phone at (570) 289-4783 or by email at
stonewaller@frontiernet.net.
Ken
Ely is a native of Susquehanna County who has been involved
in stone-wall building and restoration since his teenage years.
His other interests include cooking, backpacking, and travel. He
is a member of Woodbourne Forest Preserve Stewardship Committee,
The Sierra Club, and Keystone Trails Association. Ken began rebuilding
fallen stone walls at Woodbourne Orchards in Dimock, PA, for the
Cope family. The walls at Woodbourne revealed to Ken their structure
and the skills of their builders.
While
he builds mostly utilitarian structures, Ken finds a certain artfulness
in fitting stones of varying sizes and shapes together to form
a functional, orderly whole, not unlike Baroque music. Key to
the many rewards of wall-building are the benefits of physical
exertion, the satisfaction of viewing a tangible result of one's
work, and the earthy, subtle coloring of the region's sedimentary
rock, its mosses, and its lichens. It's also important to Ken
that he creates these structures in much the same way that our
predecessors did, using simple human-powered tools.
Ken
founded Good Neighbor Walls in 1996, and has completed projects
in Susquehanna, Wyoming, Luzerne, Bradford, and Broome (NY) counties.
Beyond restoring old and building new walls, he presents slide
programs about local walls and conducts wall-building workshops.
Ken received a fellowship grant in 2009 from the Pennsylvania
Council on the Arts, and has been selected as a 2010 and 2011
Commonwealth Speaker by the Pennsylvania Humanities Council. Additionally,
his work will be featured at various locations in the state in
2010 and 2011 with the "Making it Better" tour, a traveling
exhibition of Folk Arts in Pennsylvania Today. 
This
year Ken will be demonstrating on his own property, for the first
time, in Dimock Township. The project is a new retaining wall
along the edge of the driveway. Stop by to talk about your projects
or to discuss general techniques or history. Please be aware that
the map symbol in this year's Studio Tour map is incorrectly placed,
although the text is accurate in terms of directions. The site
is located 2.2 miles southeast of Dimock on S.R. 3023, the road
that runs from Dimock to Nicholson. To find it, proceed to Dimock
on S.R. 29 (about 6 miles south of Montrose). In Dimock, turn
onto S.R. 3023 directly across from Baker's Garage. The site is
2.2 miles from Route 29, on the left. Watch for the pink arrows.
You can contact Ken by phone at (570) 289-4783 or by email at
stonewaller@frontiernet.net.