Michael Grab’s Stone Balancing: How Gravity Glue Rocks Stand Without Glue

A heavy stone perched on pebbles, stacks mirrored in still water, a whole crowd of figures balanced on a snowy outcrop: Michael Grab’s sculptures look as if they must be glued. They are not. The Boulder, Colorado, artist uses nothing but gravity and patience, which is why he calls his project Gravity Glue.

Who is Michael Grab?

Grab is a land artist and photographer and a graduate of the University of Colorado Boulder. He began stacking rocks one summer afternoon in 2008 and was soon hooked. By 2010 he was practising around 20 hours a week, much of it along Boulder Creek, and he looked for inspiration to other balancers such as Bill Dan in San Francisco.

His balances have since travelled far beyond Colorado. His website lists work in Canada, China, Costa Rica, Croatia, England, Germany, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey and the United States, and he has built sculptures in front of live audiences, including a performance at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.

In GRAVITY GLUE-An Interview with Michael Grab, published by Chuck Richardson, he explains his approach in his own words.

The secret: a tripod of contact points

There is no trick, magnet or hidden pin. Every rock has small notches and bumps, and Grab looks for three of them that can act as a natural tripod for the stone above. A rock does not need a flat base to stand; it needs three stable points of contact that put its centre of gravity directly over them.

He finds them by feel. Turning a stone slowly, he senses tiny vibrations through his fingertips until the balance point “clicks” and the rock steadies. “My goal is to make it look impossible, to make the balance points as small as possible,” he told 5280 magazine. From the camera’s angle, those three points often look like one, which is where the illusion comes from.

Balance as meditation

Grab describes stone balancing as a spiritual practice and compares it to yoga. Before he starts, he looks for a “zero point, or silence within myself”, and says you have to “know the rocks”. The concentration has to be complete: one rushed movement and the whole sculpture falls.

Water and evening light are recurring partners in his photographs. A still pool doubles each balance in reflection, and a low sun outlines the stones in warm light. Many of the sculptures last only until the next gust of wind, a wave or a curious animal, so the photograph becomes the lasting record.

Trying stone balancing yourself

Grab’s tripod idea is the place to begin: pick two stones with plenty of small bumps and notches. Hold the top stone loosely, rotate it slowly and feel for the moment it stops wanting to fall. Work low to the ground and keep your feet clear.

Leave the place as you found it: take your stacks apart when you finish, leave trail cairns untouched since walkers use them to navigate, and follow the rules of parks and protected areas, where moving rocks can disturb wildlife habitat.

Explore more: temporary art made with winter materials, and Nele Azevedo’s small ice figures.

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