There’s treasure in the hills above Orcutt, but it takes a special eye to see it—an eye like Dale June’s.
He sees treasure all around him, which inspires him to create intricate, detailed works of art, and still not everyone can see what he sees without taking time to reflect.
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June does a lot of mountain biking in those hills. He often finds stones and rocks that hold intriguing images. The colors, the layers, the jagged point here or the indention there—they all present themselves as the beginning of a bigger picture. It could be a feature like a nose, or an image like a bird or an eye.
Whatever the images are, June finds them.
He takes the rock and twists and turns it over and over, carving at it and sanding it until the image is revealed. Then he twists it and turns it some more, and the picture he uncovers ultimately reveals that it, in turn, is just a part of another picture when viewed from a different angle. So he uncovers that image as well. The process goes on and on with seemingly no limit to the number of images he’s able to uncover.
“It’s just soothing to me, it just soothes my soul,” June said about his art—though he points out that his intention was never to create art. He doesn’t even have artistic training. June is a mason, so he’s familiar with working with rocks. People have asked him to incorporate some of his rock-based designs into their stone fireplaces.
June’s design work started unintentionally. When he was out mountain biking, he took a rest, and a rock fell next to him.
“The next thing I know, I was shaping it,” he said. “Then I made a little face and a little unicorn and was like. ‘Check this out!’”
June uses just a utility knife, sandpaper, and a file to find his images, but they work just as well as expensive sculpting tools. With his simple tools and dedication, he can carve intricate images into fairly unyielding surfaces.
“In some of them, I see something there already, and I try to bring it out more in the rock,” he said. “For some, I try to tell a story.”
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One rock, for instance, shows an Indian head with a feather turning into an eagle. Turned upside down, it reveals a dolphin and a mermaid.
Another piece bears a half-moon face, but a closer look prompts viewers to see four faces, with the mouth of the first becoming the eye of the second, and the eye of the second becoming the mouth of the next, and so on in a flowing series of features. Such fluidity isn’t easy, so June keeps the flow by finishing each piece in one sitting.
“Once I start one, I can’t put it down, because I’ll lose my image because of the shapes and shadows involved,” he said.
Even a completed piece requires a viewer to concentrate before it gives up all that it hides. June suggests that people looking at his work take time to really focus on it, studying it from the various angles and really trying to see what’s there. He imagines an excellent project for school children: to have them take a piece home and write a story based on the images they see in it.
June’s work can be currently found at Gold Coast Art ‘n Frames, though June hadn’t anticipated anyone would have an interest in it. He simply made his pieces because he liked to.
“I was just messing around in the backyard and before I knew it, I had like 40 of them collecting dust,” he explained. “Neighbors saw them and were like, ‘You should really do something with these.’”
Though June is prolific, his massive output doesn’t mean he’s perfected his work. His intentions often aren’t realized in the images that turn up on the rocks he carries in his backpack from the hills to his home.
“Not one piece has ever turned out the way I wanted,” he admitted. “I’ll think of an eagle, and it turns out looking like a penguin.”
No matter—June lets the piece guide him, and he goes with it.
Though each image-laden rock has a different story to tell, the raw materials all come from the same place. June gets many of his rocks from a particular quarry where the sun hits them in unequal amounts, creating a variety of colors, from dark red to light white. Like the images they hold, the materials themselves all offer uniqueness.
“Some have rainbow ripples in them, some have more of one color,” June said. “It’s all the same stuff, but it looks really different.”
Arts Editor Shelly Cone rocks! Contact her at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 5-12, 2012.
