In reverse of the cliche, I brought my students a peck of our own freshly picked apples and pears today, fuel for the challenging work at hand as they begin to construct their boats at full scale. It’s been a bad year for apples along the Sonoma Coast, after an unusually cold and damp spring […]
Category Archives: flora and fauna
The Legend of Lumberjack Surfing
The following text accompanies an installation I made as part of the NOMO Exhibition we’ve designed and curated as the culmination of our residency at Kohler Arts. Over the past few weeks I’ve made fictional, yet plausible sculptural elements that support the idea that surfing has origins on the Great Lakes. I will provide more […]
Sand Trees
These elegant ‘sand trees’ are unique to the low tide conditions of Doran Beach As Ene and I begin to fabricate our relief sculptures for a system of watershed markers we’ve been commissioned to design for the City of Oakland, we’ve been returning to our local beach at low tide for research and inspiration. The […]
Flotsam of the Day
I’ve always liked to use chalk when roughing things out on wood. Lately I’ve taken to scouring the beaches during negative low tides in search of seashells for making my marks. kup scabo ??????? ??? ???? The Pacific Razor Clam is ideal, softer than the East Coast equivalent, but hard enough to make a clean […]
Specific Gravity
the surfboard originated in Hawaii, where local woods were shaped for specific waves I’ve body-surfed all my life and have a natural feel for wave mechanics, but I’m finally getting ready to learn to surf on a board. Being a ‘wood guy’ with access to local mills and several decent breaks within a few miles, […]
The Week in Bloom
action at Mavericks portends the arrival of spring to the N. Pacific (public domain) In West Sonoma County, early signs of spring are typically in sync with the arrival of a huge south swell, epitomized by the epic surf at Mavericks, about 100 miles down the coast. With more daylight and warming temperatures over the […]
Flotsam of the Day
Giant roots of mysterious origin have been washing ashore along the Sonoma Coast Like B Movie aliens readying for invasion, a mysterious crop of giant ‘beach tubers’ have blown ashore after the last string of storms and unusually high tides. I’m tempted to plant one to see what grows, but have seen enough bad movies […]