IF YOU'VE SEEN one rock, you really haven't seen them all -- at least that's how Conrad Sigmon sees it.
He finds inspiration in the fractured chunks of rocks that surface in his garden. The whitish quartz is colored by orange traces of iron. Some stones have peculiar shape, color, or mineral stripe. When one strikes his fancy, he saves it. Some inspire him to make sculptures.
"The idea is the biggest thing," he says.
Sigmon rarely breaks a stone to fit the sculpture. He'd rather fit lots of stones together. He usually finds what he needs, or is inspired by what he finds.
"I thought this rock looked like an apple, and this one, a bag of seed," he explains, showing a small statue of the legendary Johnny Appleseed.
It's a compilation of a dozen or more small rough-edged stones, carefully glued together to express arms, legs and a friendly face. One arm rests upon a round, greenish stone, the "apple." On a squarish white stone Sigmon has printed "seed."
Sigmon started building his miniature world last summer, when it was too hot to spend time outdoors.
He made things his grandchildren would enjoy, like the baboon from "The Lion King," a snake and a poodle.
He fit together a choice selection of squarish quartz rocks to create an alligator.
From rocks he's made a bear, an eagle and a nest of three white owlets complete with soft cotton around their feet.
Most of the sculptures are about 4 inches tall.
A figure of Paul Bunyan is Sigmon's largest creation.
It's about 18 inches tall, complete with a weighty ax and a belt of stone rubble rivets over mineral-striped trousers.
For the beard, he applied tufts of steel wool.
The rest of the collection of 22 stone sculptures includes Noah's ark with animals of carefully paired nubs of gravel and sandstone.
Using stones has led Sigmon to develop his style of abstraction, depicting familiar themes.
Sometimes the result is an intriguing visual puzzle, such as a frog from a rough-textured stone or his miniature Nativity placed on a stone hillside.
Some sculptures he gave to relatives because they enjoyed them.
Some are patriotic, or represent memories. Stone soldiers are raising a flag on Mount Sarabochie, a memory of World War II and Sigmon's service in the Navy.
Two pebble children are diving from the big rock at Harpers Ferry -- a childhood memory. The moon landing is here, too, the astronaut in stacked-up broken stones, with tiny stone face peering through a lens Sigmon cut from a plastic soda bottle.
