Ene spins the composter above our vegetable garden MIX, our bike-powered compost tumbler, has found a final home on the Wowhaus compound, perched atop what remains of a pool deck, above our vegetable garden. The tumbler quickly breaks down our kitchen scraps, mixed with ashes and sawdust, and dumps the mixture into a garden bed […]
Category Archives: studio process
Rooftop Lizard Habitat
Artist Mark Brest van Kempen explains his water catchment/recycling system We spent an inspiring evening yesterday at the home of our friend Mark Brest van Kempen, an Oakland-based artist whose work “draws our attention to nature’s role as source, setting and savior“. Mark’s house and studio are a kind of living laboratory nestled in the […]
Giant Eucalyptus
Taking a break under a giant bluegum eucalyptus on Whitaker Bluff The eucalyptus was planted extensively throughout California by Australians during the Gold Rush for use as timber. They mistakenly thought the wood to be well suited for railroad ties, but the trees took differently to the soil and tended to grow in spirals, the […]
Running Fence Revisited #1
A section of the fabric from Christo’s ‘Running Fence’ (1976) is used as a backdrop for the Salami Toss at the Occidental Fire Department’s annual summer barbecue. When Christo and Jeanne-Claude realized their seminal Running Fence project in West Sonoma County in the mid-1970’s, they traded materials used to construct the 24 mile long fence […]
Scent Memory (Yankee Beach Cottage)
In the powdered donut drawer, a bank’s blue ballpoint pens. Beneath the white pine floor damp sand beds cedar cellar beams. Above the front screen door, the transom’s wavy pane’s trimmed, pinned with enough loving imperfection to shed a season’s rains in a blow, sweetening the chamfered glow.
A Chair for Mildred’s Lane
I made this sketch of a sixteenth century dining chair I saw at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The chair is thought to be either English or Scandinavian in origin, and we did see many like it at folk museums last summer while traveling around Norway and Estonia. The type is well suited for production […]
Green Walnut Harvest
Ene and Aili harvested hundreds of green walnuts from our tree to make our annual batch of nocino, the homemade digestif we like to share with friends and family on special occasions throughout the year. The nuts peaked about a week later than last year, and we managed to clear the tree of the plump, […]