I’ll only briefly introduce it with an appreciation of the work which
lofts over the open stairway, made by RYAN! Fedderson, which intrigued
my calligraphic doppelgänger, Leo Toye, for its often humorous
complexity…
The glyphs seem first to soar, or then cascade & rise through
permutations in a manner of regimental wriggling which I have yet to
translate &/or decipher.
Complex glyphic evolution is one suggestion.
Reflecting all the varieties of science & curiosity of the museum’s collection & mission.
After escaping the farm to go to college, I became rather
adamant in the abandonment of my rural origins. However, I made another
turn when becoming involved with my first partner named Stephen. SELaM
& I gardened for a number of seasons at the home we bought together
in north Denver, which we called The Highlands, that being the name of
the area of the city which had been developed late in the 19th century,
on a bluff above the city.
Leaving that relationship, with the intention to move to San
Francisco, I took a long detour… making an exploration of an unexpected
opportunity in Sedona, Arizona.
This view of the Bothy’s backside explains the beginnings of my dream
toward a stairway down from where I might want to bring my coffee
along… to see how the garden grows.
After several years
of volunteering at the Mother Garden & meeting Dougo’s imaginative
& playful sense of planting the salad crops for which it was famous.
I appreciatively began designing Avalon’s beds in parterre patterns…
trying for a harmony of colors & textures of lettuces & the wide
variety of salad greens which I was meeting, having never known them in
the high mountain desert of Arizona. I allowed them to spill over the
sides of the bed to continue the design into the path.
It was wonderful to enjoy watching them grow into fulsome abundance to encourage the technique of “cut & cut again” harvest.
This is one such
harvest of cuttings during a particularly lush season when I could
augment our offering to Food For Thought, the West Sonoma Aids food
bank.
This was gathered in
the “bean room”… a concept I’d begun designing while I lived in Sedona
to create privacy behind Upwillow. This incarnation was built more
substantially with salvaged aluminum pipe, with a beveled glass tabletop
suspended with a tree trunk pedestal on a carpet of Roman chamomile, a
plant I came to love for its soft fluff & fragrance.
I’d long wanted a
stairway down from the deck off my apartment above to make easier access
to the garden, so when my parents came to visit, during the decade they
were wandering in their various campers & trailers I was ready to
suggest the project to Poppa because this was his wont… to assist making
some accomplishment with the collection of tools he carried as a
portable wood shop. He had done such work for each of their siblings
& each of us kids as they visited around the country. All of our
homes & lives were thus enhanced by his ambition to help by keeping
himself occupied. Momma enjoyed helping in the garden & kitchen as
well as more settled time for her embroidery, sewing & mending. We
were thus enriched by such extended time for deeper family visits.
It
hung cantilevered from the deck, creating a “pulpit” for me on its
landing. Preaching to the choir of the garden. I made a figurehead,
clutching a ceramic globe glazed cobalt (with a story for later). This
was a good, sweet & very functional project. Thanks, Poppa!
The spring we were preparing to host a
wedding of JP’s niece there was delivered, a bit mysteriously, a
substantial pile of landscape soil was delivered, a bit mysteriously. I
claimed it for sculpting a frog folly sculpted over a pile of errant
clay & planted with Scotch & Irish moss… with a big mouth in
which to sit in the fragrance of more Roman chamomile.
With a capacious mouth in which one could sit… settling inside the fragrant cushion of more Roman chamomile.
I was working on it
when Michael Hathaway… a friend who I knew from volunteer days at the
Mother garden… brought Stephen to meet me, thus fulfilling my dreamy
requirement that the romance, for which I was finally ready, after a
decade of chosen celibacy, come literally to me. That introduction
became undoubtedly the most incredible meeting of my life, becoming a
26-year-long love story… & still counting…
I first learned the
word BOTHY as having some notion that it described a barn… while I was
then living & working in a building with a barn-shaped roof. My
colleague, Teresa Toole, of Irish heritage, suggested it as a brand name
for my line of silver bells, which I considered for a while, but it
seems more truly to define a simple hut or cottage, probably not with a
gambrel roof! Plus, I was quite happily habituated with my initial
identity…
So, while not quite
literally accurate, I nonetheless came to use that name for my studio
near Occidental, California, which is in western Sonoma County, south of
the Russian River area.
I was part of a cadre of us who became known by our initials in
college, dubbed thus by our mutual friend FEK. For quite a long while, I
thought her name was named “Effie Kay”!
Some of us still use that convention, even as we’ve used other nicknames. ONE of us made it his business name…
I had moved from Sedona, Arizona to be with long-time friends during
their period of a complex transition. The move also certainly marked a
complex transition of my own. Having lived in Sedona’s high mountain
desert location for 14 years, adjusting to a coastal climate was a
welcome change for me.
FWK & his partner JP had purchased this property of 30 acres with
three houses for their retirement home, preparing to leave Los Angeles,
where FWK had run his family’s business representing Lalique Crystal
for a loosely simultaneous amount of time as I was living in Sedona. I
was often invited to spend some holiday times & they would
occasionally visit me for summer creek time.
The stories of our friendship are too long & deep for sharing
here, but I joined them in part to escape the situation of my having
finished my time in the Red Rocks & still wanted to follow my long
held desire to live in San Francisco… that’s where I originally thought I
would move when I left Denver in 1974, but decided to stop in Sedona. I
was also there wanting to become part of JP’s HIV care-taking.
JP had been a realtor, in both San Francisco & Los Angeles,
developing his crafty eye for value in architecture plus, both of them
had a natural flair for interiors.
“The Ranch”, as it was generically known for its first year or so,
had good bones. This was a country home, much more casual than where
they’d been dancing with real estate in Silver Lake & Hollywood. Not
actually a ranch, being located in a territory of apple orchards, we
later formalized its name as Avalon, from a quote I liked from Robert
Graves, who defined it as meaning “green apple island in the western
sea”.
They made some wonderfully simple changes to the main house &
used the second as their guest house & office. The third house was
offered to me to rent as a rather perfect place to live & work. It
had been designed with several specific functions: At ground level was a
wide bay long enough to house the old hook & ladder fire engine the
owner had presumably collected to restore, because the side-space was
crammed full with tools & parts. There was much sorting to clear
& open that space for the working areas of the studio.
Two large doors opened the fire
engine’s bay… Now opening its generous space for creative play. It got
painted during my time in a darker color, which I helped to choose…
Once
cleared, there was much more than the space than I needed for my
studio… leaving a generous area open for an arrangement of shelves &
a big table for communal use for all sorts of projects, as well as
storage for bikes, various garden, orchard & carpentry tools, &
the freezer… all in addition to the small tractor, which was Jimmie’s
dream-toy.
Besides my drafting table there was a large project table, the top of
which was assembled of 4X8 sheets of plywood & Masonite, supported
on the antique pine piece I’d requisitioned years before from the
“haunted” house I’ve written about here: . It has six
handsomely turned, sturdy legs for which I’d long ago added a top of oak
flooring, making it useful as a chopping top in several studio
kitchens. It has functioned importantly in every home/studio I’ve had
since.
One of the early communal projects was
the sad construction of Jimmie’s square for the Aids Quilt. He died that
first Christmas. I wish this photo was clearer… the object shown
hanging in the upper left is the sculpted paper crown which I’d made for
wreathing the top of the 12-foot tall tree on which we’d only just
gotten the hundreds of tiny lights attached, ready to begin adding the
ornaments, when he went to the hospital for the last time. As a fitting
visual silence, we allowed the tree to remain bare but for being simply
crowned, in its softly brilliant light.
Here is that table at work on another
project several years later, when I tackled designing the logo for the
group of us volunteers protesting a threat to our beloved “Mother
Garden”.
I’m deeply bonded with the old dental bench
my father gave me long ago, shown here in an earlier studio. It has
functioned wonderfully as my metals bench such that it will continue to
work & function mechanically in the now & perhaps a bit
symbolically as well in the future, as I continue “retiring” from such
work. It certainly worked hard in the Bothy!
Here it is in my Vashon Island studio… Soundcliff!
But, of course, my favorite work space has always been my wax desk. I
carved many dozens of bell designs here during the years when I first
had the contract with KKM, in Seattle, to make a new bell design every
month.
When I first moved from Sedona I was still working with the foundry
I’d helped to establish there with the equipment I’d bought so that I
could explore developing a production line. That dream proved too big
for me, so I first leased & then sold it to Edward, who had his own
vision for a foundry. That casual partnership became the impetus for the
bells… I impulsively carved the first bell as an object to test the
function of that foundry, not knowing it was the beginning of my
artistic life’s biggest evolution…
The box being packed with touched-up production waxes to be sent to the foundry…
At that time, I was purchasing only the rough castings of the bells
& doing all the rest of their production myself. First polishing
the original master… the first casting from which I vucanize the mold
for injecting the production waxes, which were then tucked inside the
protection of foam punched with holes to cushion them in the mail
sending them back to the foundry to be cast. I then did all the
polishing & assembly.
One of the earliest & most complicated parts of this studio was
the polishing room I built to help streamline that dirtiest part of my
process… finishing & polishing the raw castings I was receiving from
the foundry in Sedona. This had been the method of manufacturing the
bells for several years, even before I moved to California.
Three
polishing motors, each with two buffing wheels, stood in a row…
allowing me to easily move down the line from coarser-to-finer grits.
Behind those I built an elaborate filter system with a strong fan to
pull the lint & dust through the round ports behind each unit into a
plenum, which was a series of
plywood chambers with alternating up/down openings which gradually
dropped the fine debris before a final micro filter. This kept the
studio much more tidy & the atmosphere cleaner than ever before. It
was actually fun to tackle what had long been a very messy chore.
After
my years in the high mountain desert of Northern Arizona, I began
taking root again in the garden of Avalon. I’m making a second blog post
about how gardening became a passion in the years I lived in the Bothy.
I remember that my Grandfather Barnett raised the “dinner-plate” type
of these flowers when I was a youngster… but I only began to grow them
about 10 years ago, when I was given several bulbs by an acquaintance.
In fact, they were the first of what is now a yearly robust avalanche of
this big white variety, which I’ve divided to plant several patches of.
I enjoy gathering just a few too many of these lovelies into a blowsey
bunch into an old pewter vase…
Another vase collected the “stray” blooms more haphazardly up on the
wide bedroom window sill, where there is a similarly loose collection of
animal sculptural pieces: one of a pair of crystal birds; a cast iron
dog & several long cherished pottery oil lamps by my friend Dwight
Davidson… a humorous cobalt Holstein cow & one of the ducks which
were his earliest production pieces. Each of these has some story, of
course.
This image hosts so much “history” for me… It records a construct of
rock & stone which I displayed for some while on my studio desktop
sometime in the mid-seventies when I lived in Sedona, Arizona for 14
years. I’ve had studios in my home for most of my life. Many artists
prefer being able to move easily between the areas of work &
personal life. Home & studio shelter the total me. I named this home
Up-Willow because it had the large weeping willow tree for which I suppose the street was named… Willow Way.
The hefty ironstone platter is still a favorite for serving our
Thanksgiving turkey, but I was then having a bit of an affair with “rough”…
that being the term for raw stone or rock which could be cut into
usefully finished pieces by the various lapidary processes I was
exploring as ancillary to my work as a jeweler.
I began collecting rough material of numerous varieties, thinking I
would cut or carve some of it for projects I was fantasizing during this
wildly fertile period… particularly when I was designing larger
projects like the egg & the backgammon set, which incorporated
materials other than the more usual gemstones & were often
accomplished in collaboration with other artists working with such
diversity of materials.
I still have most of that collection of raw stones, having never
pursued much of such ambition. But, being always a cook, I once was
inspired to serve it up this way, posing as being at least visually
edible, with colors & textures suggesting meats & vegetables… a
roast with potatoes & gravy with cauliflower, perhaps?
Set at a place with ancillary utensils of magnification, tweezers for
gripping, & with a selection of colorful silk “napkins” my friend
Marie Stewart made for my use as pocket squares for the rare occasions I
wore sport coats in those days. These were scraps of silk she dyed to
make the cravats which I was also sporting affecting!> as I danced with my claim of being a fantasy artist in cowboy country.
Thus, this playful presentation as a display becomes a rather more
fulsomely archival statement, bringing numerous memories I’m intrigued
to attempt to share. Beginning with that “cauliflower” form, the whitish
brain-like specimen in the center, which I assume is quartz of some
variety, which I collected for its sculptural form, but now piques
memories of my study of the sculptural form of the human brain, which I
was researching to accomplish reducing that form into a gold pendent
barely larger than a garbanzo bean as a graduation gift for a
daughter’s degree in some sort of brain science from her father. This
was a period when I was accepting commissions for working with the wide,
& sometimes wild, variety of clientele who found their way to this
studio.
There are many of these rocks about which I know little more than
they captured me in that way in which stone… from alabaster to diamonds…
owns its own attraction & seduction toward being used in the realm
of jewelry or sculpture.
Ultimately all becomes personal taste, of course.
Thus, I see a rutilated quartz version of the egg form with which I
have an affinity as a symbol of birth & rebirth… plus a cube of the
same material nearby, because I love the geometry which brings these
initially dull rocks into their glory as gemstones. To the left is a
piece of coconut shell, because I was teach-learning myself by playing
with numerous materials to carve other than the wax work I do for
designing & casting.
I love making a single verb out of processes, usually used
hierarchically. I’ve come to believe one cannot teach unless one is also
learning… & vice versa. One verb in my lexicology!
Into that coconut curve nestles/cradles a piece of the “rind” [The
weathered exterior of a piece of mammoth tusk I acquired for carving the
heron birds of the egg. This wonderful carving material is the lovely
ivory of the tusks of extinct mammoths, thus making it legal,
but surfacing evermore rarely as the glaciers melt. The old ice is
mostly melted… progress, in one sense… out with the old… but, being
extinct …there is now little more to replace it…
I carved the fish swimming in the cordial glass from a light blue
stone named varasite, which is soft enough to allow me to work it with
my familiar tools. This piece is a total rarity, being the only full
sculpture in stone which I ever accomplished. I worked only a few pieces
of stone to any useful state during this period of haphazard
experimentation.
The horizontal slab is a cross-section of petrified palm wood, with a
visually fibrous texture captured to become stone, waiting for some
aesthetic purpose. A smaller slab of blue lapis-lazuli sits atop it… a
material using which I used in the designs of several rings. On top that
a rutillated quartz cube & a small egg made of that same material…
clear, but embedded with fine crystals of rutile, creating a sparkly,
straw-like interior atmosphere.
I have long collected eggs in many materials. There is a turkey
eggshell leaning close-by & a brass egg which has threads which
unscrews to open as a container which I used as a presentation box for
my custom jewelry. I wish I could still find these, which were then
relatively inexpensive, being made in India.
In the back shadow is a spherical “artifact” of cobalt glazed clay
which is part of a project of my deepest com padre, soul lover &
long-time fellow artist whom I met during this period, Dwight Davidson
davidsonsculpture.com/artifact.htm>… I tell our part in that project
in this post: https://www.grbbells.com/india-archival-2005-travelogue/. Obviously, there are oh so many more stories… for later!
The varisite fish perches on a pillar of alabaster along with a
selection of unpolished castings from the Limited Edition Bells & a
mastodon ivory tile made by Jahn Baker, with whom I collaborated to make
the Backgammon Set, about which I intend to write soon. That tile was
scrimshawed with my lion logo by Kim Kori. [https://www.facebook.com/KimKoriSculpture
Below are several of the Cypress Crotals
are the cutlery of this study, all are shown resting on the desk top
which I made in Poppa’s shop on the farm before returning to DU as a
junior, into my first off-campus apartment. It is currently my computer
desk & I am writing this post now on that same desk! This too
becomes quite another slice, or slab, of my life…
We’ve had a fair richness of the usually more rare Orca whale
sightings in the Puget Sound in front of us since the year began. What a
treat! They are examples of life under the duress of dwindling food
supply while still playing hard. Unfortunately, this event was harassed
by a stupidly overweening boat which intentionally moved in front of
their obvious path, causing them to dive, in order to thwart the
stupidity of such yahoo energy attempting to corral them… & thus
ending the show for all of us. It is so sad that our culture seems to be
spawning more of such insensitive bullies…
Then he
sped off toward the next spot where they might breach. But they are
clever & easily might foil him with their capability to dive, turn
& hide.
That wake does not belong to a lover of nature…
Fortunately, we live in a place with many much wiser beings. Our
Mother Mountain, whom we call by the indigenous name Tahoma. Mt Rainier
was named for a British Admiral who fought against the American Colonies
in the Revolutionary War. A dude who never saw it!
Being a volcano overdue, she hovers with the deliciously destructive
possibility of becoming an enlivened menace of smoke, ash & lava,
possibly even triggering a tsunami as retribution should we humans
continue to get in the way of nature’s actual progress!
That ends my sermon…
Since Stephen planned to make his way into town to do errands, he
took the opportunity to drive on down to the southern point, around
which their usual route takes these pods as they circulate around the
Island. I suppose the word circumambulate isn’t quite the proper word for these swimming mammals with astounding fins.
Thank you, Stephen, for sharing these shots of them showing their stuff at closer range!
They
seem to enjoy this variety of human appreciation. There are no idiots
in boats to escape. What a wonderful thing to experience as a child, no
matter what age!Puget
Sound is another manifestation of the abundant mother energy, which I
celebrate. Her mysterious hidden depths resonate in contrast to the more
visible loft of our Lady Mountain.
Because many years in our Pacific Northwest climate have
little of winter harshness we often garden almost continuously, but we
did have a significant snow storm this February, while we were taking a
break from home to visit Orcas Island, leaving care of Soundcliff with a
friend. We became snowbound in a cabin with few of our usual amenities,
but we enjoyed the change of view.
After that snow we continued to slowly welcome spring in our
typically broken rhythm gradually bringing sporadic warmth to the soil
the garden needs to bloom into the colors of blossoms.
This Star Magnolia has grown into a magnificent billow of white for many years.But the quince from similar vintage has stayed small, while gifting its red as a harbinger of very early spring…The sixteen sided bed Whitney built last fall bloomed full of a variety of daffodils.A new favorite is a complex double having a peachy coloration.We got these tulips on a trip including Amsterdam https://www.grbbells.com/croatia-venice-amsterdam-part-six/> in 2018.One
arrangement of tulips became a temporary grazing ground for a trio of
golden dinosaurs with spiny air plants which Our friend Kate Thompson
gifted Stephen for his birthday.The
checkered fritillaria meleagris has seemingly established itself,
showing up for a third year to delight with its improbably magical
geometry.Our
eastern exposure brings sunrise into the bed… making sometimes quite a
spectacular wake-up call… but usually I can pull the covers over my head
for a little more snoozing! Daffodils often came to the table. This time cupped into a rather large version of a tussy mussy made of a Petisides leaf
which is another exotic plant we love to use in our garden for its very
large round leaves, making a large statement as a border planting.
We’d
set up the large dining table with extra leaves for enough length to
make better social distancing as we negotiated the few times we had a
guest or two during the pandemic. It encouraged bringing-out some of our
wilder table coverings, like this ikat weaving from Indonesia.But
that only added to the strong color & pattern already present in
the atypical scheme which we’ve been experimenting. The new red wood
stove has been joined by a pair of too-low chairs in a too-bright blue…
wanting dense foam “risers” upholstered in the low toned green in the
rug… plus some indigo runners tucked over to tame the blue. That
blue is similar to Stephen’s choice for the rocking chair he painted
during the winter, which now invites contemplation of the view from the
deck of his writing cottage…The rhododendron season became spectacular.Stephen has been collecting rhodies for years, often as memorials for friends. This “capuchin” is one of my favorites.& this deep red one’s hue frequently vibrates in my camera so much as to frequently be almost impossible to capture.The
prow deck, perched on pilings holding the retaining walls holding us
atop this cliff, is flanked by rhodies with foxglove in the border above
& three big dahlia bushes beginning to grow toward blooming in a
couple of months. The garden is always evolving, whether with
expansion of established plantings or the placement of new things we are
constantly bringing home.The
bench outside the studio door has for months accumulated such
collections waiting their for the soil & beds prepared & ready
to receive them… plus the planning to place them.We
have several duplex viburnums, but this one has been here for some 20
years & now raises its horizontal blooms high enough to walk under
it.The
“Dutchman’s pipe” vine on the main deck railing is a total trooper,
having been cut back last mid-summer to allow painting its support,
after which it grew back with surprising vigor for the late season. I
prune it back to the main stems each winter, revealing the fascinatingly
twisted integration with the metal grid.Lupin is another sculptural lovely.Iris have been a favorite since my childhood. This is a lovely traditional blossom.Still, we have half a dozen varieties, including Japanese & Siberian.There’s nothing like poppies to make us happy, if not “sleepy” …The raspberries are coming along. Stephen loves them on cereal. I hope for ice cream.As are the peonies, which are another flower I’ve known since childhood on the farm.Hostas
are so much about the northwest & we are growing a collection of
their gorgeously ribbed & convoluted leaf forms in various
coloration.A
two year old “sweet potato vine” wants to take over the north garden
gate… just as we’d hope it will. Covered with blossoms of lovely
periwinkle blue it should help shield the view from the road down into
the garden, although we are quite happy to share tasty views of our
efforts to the few neighbors who pass by on walks or, more usually, too
quickly in autos.Much
of the garden is quite a mash-up in early spring. The yellow is
buttercup, which is a weed invading all our beds as well as the lawn…
thriving to better even the grass while being frequently mowed flat. The
blue of Forget Me Nots are mostly welcome as early color, but it seeds
so profusely & grows so vigorously that it can shade other plants,
so we have to become ruthless to keep it under control.A
plant I bought several years ago has become a curious volunteer from
seed as well. It is another rather impossible color… cerinthe an intense
purplish blue against a grayish green foliage which takes-on tinges of
the same hues. I’m learning to like its rangy structure, which can work
well allowed to trail over the edge of a raised bed. I’m recently
enjoying it as a cut flower draping out of a vase of iris.Another
lovely blue is the blossoming of rosemary, tiny & tucked into the
sturdy fragrant herb. When I’m patient, I love to collect a small
handful to finish a salad.Still
the structure of our ancient native cherry tree… the one for which Tom
& I built a Japanese “crutch” holds the south lawn & garden
borders with sturdy elegance gifting structure as well as lovely light
& shadow.My favorite mask was a gift from my siblings-in-love Alice & John. Perfect for a double Leo!Recent,
frequent rains have conspired with my neglect to provide the dramatic
leek scapes I enjoy as sculpture in the garden each year. There is a
small patch of garlic just behind.
While the leek scapes soar up into the hazy sky of what I’ve begun calling the Wet Coast there came the gift of an introduction
to a new acquaintance who had just acquired a drone & offered to
play with making a film of Soundcliff. It was a good experience to
watch. I’d been curious about such new technology & found myself
begin to become desirous. But, no, this is not my new creative medium,
even as I watched to learn.
I do certainly enjoy having some great trips into new visual realms I
appreciate having been gifted. My favorite is soaring up high enough
above those leek scapes to see the entire property & garden, from
the Shenanigan Road down to the beach, giving a sense of the cliff as
the view widens to show just where we live… always on the edge… lively!
Another sunrise, showing our mountain, Tahoma across the Puget Sound.
Once
cleared, there was much more than the space than I needed for my
studio… leaving a generous area open for an arrangement of shelves &
a big table for communal use for all sorts of projects, as well as
storage for bikes, various garden, orchard & carpentry tools, &
the freezer… all in addition to the small tractor, which was Jimmie’s
dream-toy.
