Steve Oliver inside Ann Hamilton’s tower I took a break from our Oakland Fusion Installation over the weekend to recharge, touch base with family and friends, and take advantage of a rare opportunity for a private tour of Oliver Ranch. Our group met in Healdsburg at the home of our gracious friend and host, Cindy […]
Category Archives: aesthetics
E LA VA TIWO
This site is an experiment in creating an almanac of contemporary craft practice, and I’m pleased to find a network of like-minded folks who share an interest in reclaiming ‘craft’ beyond its niche as the lesser cousin of art and design. My hope is that this site will grow as a common repository for makers […]
Missing Stories
Sometimes I think of Art as involving missing stories, requiring more work to assemble a narrative in lieu of functionality (the domain of handicraft). I was thinking about these ‘missing stories’ as I swept around a handmade steamer trunk we found years ago at a garage sale in Oakland. Obviously a production of necessity, the […]
Small is Beautiful, Revisited
The cardinal virtues of temperance, prudence, fortitude, and justice I recently reread E.F. Schumacher’s classic Small is Beautiful (originally published by Blond and Riggs Ltd., London, 1973). I first read this book as part of my training with the US Peace Corps almost 20 years ago when I was an ‘appropriate technology’ agent in West […]
Harris Tweed
I keep my favorite Harris Tweed in the wood shop for chilly mornings, the pockets loaded with cedar shavings to ward off moths. My father bought this one new in the 1950’s and handed it down to me when I was in college. It has served as my armor ever since, whether I am building […]
Driftwood Symposium
I’ve been collecting driftwood over the past couple of years and organizing it according to its general type (girth, length, curvature, species) and the frequency with which it can typically be found on stretches of beach near the mouth of the Russian River. I’d like to expand upon my collecting, make a kind of a […]
New Idea
Every wave has a new idea*