Once you grew accustomed to the rumble of air compressors and pneumatic tools, you noticed the dust.

It was thick in the air and clung to the hair, clothes and goggles of the stone carvers finishing up a long day of chiseling and pounding limestone at Burcham Park.

The residue and the stone chips in piles on the ground were signs the carvers  from novices to veterans  made progress on the first day of the Kansas Stone Symposium.

The event, organized by the Kansas Sculpture Assn. and Bayer Stone Inc., continues today and Sunday at the park. Experienced carvers will be on hand to assist beginners throughout the weekend.

Participants are asked to bring gloves and carving tools if they have them. Some tools are available for loan.

On Friday, forms were beginning to emerge from hunks of stone: a guitar, a pair of horse heads, a sphere balanced on a quartet of columns.

For those who worked exclusively by hand  wielding a hammer to strike points and chisels  the day was exhausting.

“There’s an ache to it, but you know that you’ve accomplished something,” Lawrence wood and stone sculptor Mary Weisert said. “And Advil works wonders.”

Weisert was chipping away at a reclining male figure that eventually will complement a reclining female figure.

“It’s in there,” she said of the still unchiseled female form. “All you have to do is work to get it out. You’re just releasing it.”

At 10 a.m. today, Lawrence sculptor Elden Tefft will release his statue, “Keepers of Our Universe,” to the city of Lawrence during a dedication ceremony.

Tefft has been working on the statue since 1988 through a process he calls a community carve. People  some with no art experience  from Lawrence and the surrounding area have helped him create the statue.

It has an ecological theme, with satellite pieces inspired by the Kansas state song, “Home on the Range.”

Tefft, who taught sculpture at Kansas University for about 40 years, said there was pleasure in seeing a finished product appear after so long.

“You have a certain amount of satisfaction at the completion and doing what you do best,” he said.

The symposium began in 1984 and brings together stone craftspeople every two years in different Kansas towns. The last symposium in Lawrence resulted in the stone buffalo that occupies a stand of native prairie on Clinton Parkway.