I have the good fortune of living in a most beautiful area, tucked in the woods between the Hudson River and the eastern edge of the Catskills. Thanks to its unique geologic history, fossils abound, specifically invertebrate fossils from the Devonian Period (350 - 400 million years ago). In many locations it sometimes seems that every other rock contains a fossil. They can appear to be so commonplace that, aside from schoolchildren hunting for them on  science field trips, most of us stumble over them with barely a notice.

     Not long ago, I took the time to look a bit closer and was amazed at what I found. Hiking and climbing in creek beds, gravel pits and quarries, even the hill out back, yield many and varied fossils. The images that appear here are part of a long term project, a decidedly unscientific one that reflects the intrinsic beauty of these creatures from an incomprehensively distant past. In removing any reference to suggest scale, they appear as beautiful sculptural objects seeming to grow out of the surrounding rock.

Art Murphy