The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

DAYTON-The Wenaha Gallery will feature Walla Walla stone carver Sandra Matthews-Sarve February Art Event.

Sandra Matthews-Sarve works with both what is considered "normal carving stones,"

Including marble, alabaster, and soapstone, as well as ordinary rocks she and her husband find on their drives through the Southeast Washington area.

She started carving in stone as an extension of her desire to work with ordinary, discarded, or overlooked items in life, and rocks fit that qualification.

"Most people ignore rocks," said Matthews-Sarver. "My art does reflect my need to find beauty and usefulness in the ordinary or discarded things in life."

Her studio is her driveway and garage, where she works with angle grinders, chisel, hammer, Dremel tool, files, rifflers, and rasps. The resulting sculpture is sometimes functional, including tiny plant pots, a miniature Zen garden, jewelry and trinket dishes, and pen holders. Sometimes it is purely ornamental like her sinuous, elegant sculptures of swans, dancers, and birds. Straddling the two are her exquisitely carved garden ornament blocks.

The gallery is open Monday through Thursday from 9-5, and Fridays, during the winter, from 9-4.