The Sandstone Steps: Artist Talk

A TRANSATLANTIC COLLABORATION BETWEEN ARTISTS HUGH BRYDEN & MADDY ROSENBERG.

Sandstone Steps is an ambitious collaborative project that explores and celebrates the historical cultural flux that crossed and re-crossed the Atlantic between the coasts of New York and Dumfries and Galloway. It all began with the voyage of sandstone and craftsmen from Scotland in the nineteenth century- and still continues today.

This cultural exchange fosters collaborations between visual artists, musicians and poets from Dumfries and Galloway and New York. This collaboration is producing a prestigious limited edition artist’s book, commissioned music, poetry pamphlets and artists print portfolios. Exhibitions and performances on both sides of the Atlantic are taking place along with this.

Sandstone Steps is a multi-disciplinary cultural event in a box, an artist’s book in three parts: with a musical element, a literary element and a visual art element.

The box, in a shape of a staircase with drawers, will contain specially commissioned music, poetry and relief prints in each of its three “steps.”

From April-September 2024, it forms the center of a programme of exhibitions, concerts, poetry readings and related events in Dumfries and Galloway, then moves to New York for celebrations in 2025.