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<\/p>\nWater pours into John Felice Ceprano\u2019s rubber boots as he fishes a glossy, football-shaped rock from the Ottawa River.<\/p>\n
The 79-year-old carries the stone past a flock of swimming geese, gets down on one knee and perches one of its narrow tips atop three more grey slabs already stacked into a metre-high pillar. <\/p>\n
The resulting formation \u2013 known as a cairn \u2013 is one sculpture among dozens Ceprano has erected in lines and semi-circles this summer at Remic Rapids.<\/p>\n
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Four decades after constructing his first rock sculptures in the Ottawa River, artist John Felice Ceprano, 79, can still be found wading through the shallow waters of Remic Rapids every June, building the rock sculptures that have become a beloved local attraction.<\/p>\n
This year marks 40 years since Ceprano began building cairns at the river\u2019s outcrop. What started as a spontaneous creative impulse in 1986 has evolved into an annual attraction, with his rock sculptures drawing international media attention and turning the site into a beloved tourist attraction that invites crowds from the world over.<\/p>\n
But Ceprano isn\u2019t thinking about any of this history as he works through the July heat. He\u2019s fully focused on his art.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s just a distraction from being in the moment, right?\u201d he says. \u201cThe whole point of what I do is that we\u2019re in the now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Ceprano’s sculptures are created without the use of bonding materials, relying instead on achieving perfect balance.<\/p>\n He spends hours collecting stones from the river and finding the optimal spot along the rocky ridge, wading out into the water with his rainboots if the tide is high enough to flood it. He uses makeshift rock hammers to secure small stones, called wedges or shims, into place under larger rocks.<\/p>\n Unless he\u2019s moving something heavy, Ceprano works without gloves to \u201cfeel what the rock wants,\u201d until it \u201cfinds its place where it is balanced.\u201d<\/p>\n Ceprano, who moved to Aylmer, Que., in 1998, drives to the site \u2013 it\u2019s nine kilometres from his home \u2013 and restarts the installation every June after the previous year\u2019s stacks have been swept away by the wind, snow and rain of the changing seasons.<\/p>\n By early July, the project dominates the Remic Rapids landscape, with some of Ceprano\u2019s sculptures reaching higher than 2.5 metres. The breeze and waves inevitably knock over his creations, forcing him to constantly restart and reinvent the installation.<\/p>\n Ceprano works on his sculptures in the Ottawa River in 1998, 1999 and 2001. The National Capital Commission has facilitated his annual art installation at Remic Rapids since 2000.Adrian Wyld\/CP; Tom Hanson\/CP; Jim Young\/REUTERS<\/p>\n He says he never tires from the work, physically or emotionally. The art is a testament to his lifetime commitment to mindfulness, and to balance.<\/p>\n Ceprano was born July 6, 1947, into a tight-knit Italian family living in Providence, R.I. He earned an associate degree in physics from the Community College of Rhode Island and planned to pursue a career in meteorology, but on the advice of a professor who watched him struggle with calculus, Ceprano instead enrolled in fine arts at the University of Rhode Island.<\/p>\n While building up his skills in abstract expressionist painting and joining a campus commune to protest the Vietnam War, he built on his long-standing love for the concept of balance by learning about Taoism, the ancient Chinese philosophy that teaches about yin and yang. Ceprano would later be inspired by the 1991 philosophy and quantum physics book The Holographic Universe, especially its view that everything is interconnected \u2013 another important idea in his creative practice.<\/p>\n Ceprano also became more in tune with nature thanks to his studies on Indigenous beliefs that promote \u201cequilibrium between man and Earth,\u201d as he puts it, and experiments with drugs such as mescaline and LSD during his university years. Rhode Island\u2019s cityscapes made it hard to appreciate the environment, he says, so he and a friend went on a road trip along the south coast of New Brunswick, where he fell in love with Canada\u2019s natural landscapes.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce we got to the Bay of Fundy national park, I just said, \u2018I\u2019m going to live here. This is home,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cEnvironmental stewardship is essential in how you live in harmony with the world around you. I find it far more accessible in Canada because of the abundant amount of nature.\u201d<\/p>\n Ceprano moved to Ottawa in 1973, where he completed his fine arts degree through an exchange program at the University of Ottawa and took courses to become a part-time registered nurse at \u00c9lisabeth-Bruy\u00e8re Hospital. Between officially immigrating in 1978 and becoming a Canadian citizen by 1991, Ceprano found his now-cherished spot at Remic Rapids.<\/p>\n In June, 1986, right before his 39th birthday, Ceprano left his apartment in the Byward Market and biked along the Ottawa River in search of a peaceful place to meditate on the future. He followed the sound of the rushing rapids through some bushes and towards the water, where he found what he felt was a \u201chealing place.\u201d<\/p>\n Days later, he returned to the spot. The river had receded, exposing limestone rocks whose unique shapes and textures sparked a creative impulse. At first, Ceprano says, he was inspired to build a dam. Stacking rocks was a natural next step. Over the next few years, he honed his technique through trial and error.<\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Ceprano uses makeshift rock hammers to secure small stones, called wedges or shims, into place under larger rocks.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are people today who still think those gosh darn rocks are glued together,\u201d Ceprano says.<\/p>\n His sculptures fit into a \u201cland art\u201d tradition that emerged during the mid-20th century, involving works that draw materials from the artist\u2019s surroundings. His chosen medium dates back even further to practices from Indigenous cultures, though rock sculptures such as inuksuit are not artistic expressions. They have historically been used by Inuit communities for navigation and communication.<\/p>\n Painter Sarah Bradfield noticed the sculptures\u2019 similarity to inuksuit in 2017 when she moved to Ottawa from the Northwest Territories and stumbled upon Remic Rapids.<\/p>\n She painted Ceprano\u2019s site in 2024 for her book Ottawa ABC Landscapes, which depicts the city through a series of landscape paintings, each tied to a letter of the alphabet. Remic Rapids became the painting for the letter \u201cI\u201d \u2013 for \u201cinspiration.\u201d<\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Ottawa-based artist Sarah Bradfield’s painting Remic Rapids celebrates Ceprano\u2019s rock art.Courtesy of Sarah Bradfield<\/p>\n The painting, which earlier this year hung in the building that houses The Globe and Mail\u2019s offices in Ottawa, was most recently displayed at Galerie Old Chelsea in May and June.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m at peace when I\u2019m painting rocks,\u201d Bradfield says. \u201cMaybe it\u2019s the same for him?\u201d<\/p>\n Though Ceprano describes this part of the shoreline as healing, running the project for 40 years hasn\u2019t always been easygoing. In his first year, he hurt his back owing to poor form and had to cut his season of rock balancing short. He restarted the next summer, and that\u2019s when Ceprano says an on-camera interview with a CBC reporter brought the site popularity.<\/p>\n In 1989, Ceprano got a Canada Council for the Arts grant worth $5,000 to bring the project to life as a full-time summer job. He still worked as a part-time nurse the rest of the year. Following years of steady routine, he paused the project in 1997 after his mother died. After he returned to work at Remic Rapids in 1998, Ceprano says he arrived one day to find that someone had coated the installation in yellow paint overnight. This alerted the National Capital Commission to the site\u2019s need for conservation and support.<\/p>\n They struck up a contract by 2000 to officially protect the site with insurance coverage; install signs and plaques describing the installation; erect a shed where Ceprano stores his dolly and gloves; and hire conservation staff who monitor Remic Rapids to ensure members of the public do not disturb Ceprano or his installation.<\/p>\n Since the contract was signed, the NCC has paid Ceprano around $8,000 annually to start stacking rocks on June 15 and wrap up when the river rises in late fall. They added a barricade in the late 2010s for liability reasons.<\/p>\n Ceprano retired from his nursing job in 2012 to focus on the installation, and he says the ensuing decade was comfortable thanks to the NCC\u2019s support.<\/p>\n Ceprano works on one sculpture among dozens he has erected in lines and semi-circles this summer at Remic Rapids.<\/p>\n Local artists, including handpan drummers, Inuit throat singers, stilt walkers and fire dancers, began entertaining visitors at the site in 2005. Ceprano also hosted three festivals from 2012-14, during which a dozen rock balancing artists from around the world created a collaborative installation at Remic Rapids.<\/p>\n Michael Muir, an NCC land manager and Ceprano\u2019s long-time liaison with the organization, says the NCC was already looking for ways to help Ottawa residents access the waterfront when they found out about Ceprano\u2019s work. The installation was a natural fit for their mission. Muir says it \u201ccreates a bit of an attractive node that people love to stop at and see\u201d and \u201cgives a lovely backdrop to the Ottawa River.\u201d<\/p>\n Muir says Ceprano\u2019s passion has turned a visit to Remic Rapids into an experience for locals and international travellers alike. It was \u201creally telling,\u201d he says, \u201cwhen we started getting full tour buses of people coming in.\u201d<\/p>\n Art historian and curator Judith Parker, who was an education officer at the National Gallery of Canada for 20 years, often visits Remic Rapids, which is within walking distance from her home. She says the \u201cspace has a magic\u201d because of its natural beauty and Ceprano\u2019s \u201cincredible doggedness\u201d to make the site meaningful. It inspired her to write an application that helped Ceprano win Ottawa\u2019s 2015 Award of Excellence for urban design in public places.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s also the intrigue of figuring out and looking at his sculpture,\u201d she says. \u201cSculpture is meant to be seen not from one angle, but from many angles.\u201d<\/p>\n