PORT TOWNSEND — Blyn artist Brent Wickline said he always expected his pillars of rock to come tumbling down when people touched them.
Wickline also said he knew that one day the rocks would stay down.
“I always knew it was going to be temporary,” he said. “Even though it’s made of stone, it is temporary and that’s kind of the irony.”
It was the city of Port Townsend, not gravity, that brought down the artistic stacks of rock on the corner of Taylor and Washington streets earlier this week.
A day before the Peninsula Daily News published a full-page feature about the artist and his work, a stop-work order was placed in the small, landscaped garden and the rocks were permanently taken down by city officials.
“We’re not there to address the artistic merit of it,” said Public Works Director Ken Clow.
“We’re addressing the public safety aspect of it.”
The rock stacks were created by a simple stacking method that used no permanent construction techniques.
Wickline started with a large base rock, and then used small chips of broken rock, placed in triangles, to balance each addition to the stack.
He built structures as high as 19 rocks tall.
