I’m putting finishing touches on a series of creatures for our Sunnyside Conservatory Menagerie project for final approval from the San Francisco Arts Commission before they are cast in bronze. The Conservatory building and grounds are currently under thorough renovation, and the creatures will be permanently installed over the summer as a complement to the […]
Category Archives: studio process
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 […]
Frati Portico
Most Sunday mornings I cut wood with my friends Richard and Pierre on Richard’s homestead outside of Occidental. I call it chainsaw yoga and it is perhaps the only thing I do with such regularity. The routine is triply rewarding- we manage Richard’s woodlot by removing dead oak, supply ourselves with fuel to fire our […]
Stellate Geometries
The more time I spend away from the urban grid, the more I fall under the spell of non-rectilinear geometries. Straight lines and right angles are on the wane in my imagination, replaced by radial, spiral and stellate forms wherever I roam. I have a new appreciation for domes and geodesic thinking, and increasingly want […]
Windsor Longboard Lives
My first Windsor Longboard experimental deck is a head-turner. My friends at Quinn Brothers Board Shop in Sebastopol, CA took to the ‘uber old school’ spirit and helped me rock the deck with super wide trucks and generic wheels; note the ‘rasta’ bolt heads, the board’s only fanfare. After some road testing I plan to […]
Windsor Longboard Shapes Up
My prototype Windsor Longboard is nearing completion. I shaped the outer contours with my favorite Italian-made, mini spokeshaves. I have a set of three but use the one pictured above for almost everything- its rockered base allows for the most delicate control. Over the weekend I plan to mount trucks and wheels and test its […]
Shopmade Tamales
I love having a kitchen in my woodshop, especially during the rainy season when I often have something bubbling away on the stove while I make things in the shop. As I was making my prototype Windsor Longboard over the weekend, I prepared tamales for about twenty people coming over for our monthly ‘dinner club’. […]