This week, Heather-Lynn’s Habitat returns to a popular West Coast beach. We have tracked down the man behind the Stone Guardians of Batts Rock.
THERE IS A LOOK of concentration on his face as he examines the rocks at his feet.
One passes muster. He lifts it and his long elegant fingers handle it gently as he settles it on top another. It wobbles and refuses to settle. He turns it, ever so gently, mindful of the greater creation beneath his hand.
But the rock just would not fit and another takes its place.
This one is it.
And with an exclamation of satisfaction, with a look of glee on his face, 74-year-old Philip King steps back and surveys his newest creation.
Another rock sculpture turns its eyes-less gaze to the horizon. But it is not alone; there are 15 more Guardians of the Shore; the Lady of the Headland leads the vanguard, her “skirts”, which appear to blow in the salty breezes are just out of reach of the gently lapping waves.
As the blazing afternoon sun reluctantly releases its hold on Batts Rock, St Michael, leaving behind lengthening shadows as it slowly dips beneath the horizon, the rock sculptures seem to waver and come alive in the diminishing light.
So intense is the image of life, said King, that one woman religiously destroys them; they are infused with voodoo or some other dark element, she believes.
But the imagery, the stirring of the imagination, is not intentional, King admits.
In fact, he said the original rock sculptures, clustered close to the National Conservation Commission lifeguard hut, weren’t even his.
He happened upon them about three years ago.
“I saw them under the trees and I thought then how clever and how pretty they look in the evening.”
But one day, when he made his ritual trek to the beach for his evening swim, they had been demolished.
The sight of them covered in sand spurred the West Terrace, St James resident to action.
“I said what a pity. So I thought let me put them back up. I put them back up by memory similar to how he [the original artist] had done it.”
That was in November 2014.
But the small sculptures weren’t satisfying enough for the career Cable Wireless employee. For one, players of beach football and cricket; frolicking dogs and nesting turtles reduced the sculptures to rubble. Secondly, he called the small sculptures “finicky things”.
And so King ventured a little ways up the beach. And it became a routine. He would take his afternoon swim; emerge refreshed and create.
The member of the Barbados Dance Theatre described his first stone sculpture; the labourious process of journeying into the sea, lifting rocks, combing the beach, then back into the water.
“And I thought, this is looking kinda interesting ’cause at the end, it looked almost like a ballerina but that was not my intention. It was just to fiddle around with the rocks and that was the beginning of this,” he said as he swept his arm at the beach side.
“One evening I was sitting there as the sun was going down. I was watching it and the clouds were passing across the sun and the statues had this strange feeling as if they were moving, coming alive,” he recalled.
Then it dawned on him. Maybe, just maybe, this was the reason why he returned every Monday to find that someone had deliberately destroyed his works.
“I later discovered there was a woman who felt that whoever was putting up these things was dealing with other . . . ,” he paused as he laughed.
But reactions like that are in the minority. He remembers the strange looks as people wondered whether he was a vagrant, or worried about his sanity. But when he engages them in conversation, he said tourists are effusive in their praise. Visitors from as far away as Finland and the Hebrides (in the British Isles) are enchanted by his sculptures.
One man detoured on his trip to St Vincent just to see if they were still on the beach.
“What was amazing that a lot of people who walk the beach on evening, they suddenly stopped to look at them and as a result, I kept on adding more and more.”
King admits he derives satisfaction from seeing the pleasure on the faces of others.
“I enjoy the fact that people like them, and there are people who come back every month to see them over and over.
“It is kind of refreshing to hear how people feel about them and they are not all the same. They all have different reactions but, in the end, they leave feeling good and they want to come back. It’s a lovely feeling. What more can you ask?”
Meanwhile, the retiree admits his favourite was the one standing out to sea.
“I like that one. That is the best one I have done, that rock. That has never stood there so long until I got those rocks. Those rocks are so heavy I could barely get them up there and I suspect it is the weight because we haven’t had any really bad weather recently where the waves really dash against the rocks. So that has been like that for nearly a month. I’ll wait and see when the sea gets rough again how it responds.”
Â
