“Geologists have a saying–rocks remember. ~ Neil Armstrong 

John has an eye for rocks and a special technique for unlocking those memories.

If I walk along the shores of Lake Michigan, I see thousands of ordinary stones. John sees more.

After carefully selecting his specimens, he uses a homemade wooden jig and 6 spinning diamond blades to slice the rocks. Like a baker cutting up a fresh loaf of sourdough, John and his ingenious device transform each rock into half-inch-thick cross-sections. With veined patterns and specks of color, every slice tells a story:

Granite is an igneous rock that formed deep underground. The red or pink mineral is potassium feldspar.

Crinoid fossils are from the stems of an animal that looks like a flower, but is really a relative of the starfish.

Petoskey stones are the remains of an extinct fossil coral that lived 380 million years ago.

Stromatoporids are an extinct stony sponge, the dominant reef builders in the Silurian Period 430 million years ago.

John (occasionally assisted by Amanda) smooths out the edges and arranges the pieces In a wooden frame. Next comes thick black epoxy, lots of polishing, and a few coats of lacquer. This painstaking process produces some of the most distinctive tabletops you will ever see.

Each one tells a story, if you know have an eye for that sort of thing.

This is the latest installment in my “True Colors in Black and White” series, in which I strive to create distinctive portraits that showcase each subject’s unique personality, profession, or avocation.