Fluke Installation

We carried the Fluke sculpture into position with a giant forklift. (photo: Crystal Birns) With a big sense of relief and the pride of accomplishment, Ene and I installed our Fluke sculpture earlier this week at the Monterey Bay Marine Sanctuary Exploration Center in Santa Cruz. Piero and his crew from Artworks Foundry delivered the […]

Milling the Valley Oak

Shawn trims the ends of the felled trunk before quartering the log. I met my friend Shawn Gavin at the old Felta School near Healdsburg the other day to mill a Valley Oak. I had purchased the log from the school after it was felled for safety concerns last September, and have been eager to […]

Reviving the Garden (+ a recipe)

Ene builds towers for her peas to climb. With help from friends we’ve been reviving our vegetable garden over the past few weeks. It’s been about 5 years since we built the raised beds, and with the demands of projects and travel over the past couple of years, the garden has been sorely neglected. The […]

Fluke Site Progress

The Diamond D crew builds forms for our curvaceous hardscape. (photo: D Pettigrew) Ene and I recently made two site visits to Santa Cruz to inspect form-work for the hardscape beneath our Fluke sculpture at the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Exploration Center. Our bronze whale tail sculpture will sit at the edge of a […]

Tsuru Progress

My wooden crane sculpture is ready to be cast in bronze at Berkeley’s Artworks Foundry I spent the past two days at Artworks Foundry putting final touches on my crane sculpture for our Tsuru project. After permanently connecting the 9′ wingspan to the 8′ body, I focused on patching seams, shaping final contours and finessing […]

Learning from Sand Patterns

A section of the texture I’ve been carving into my crane sculpture. I’ve learned a lot from studying sand patterns at the beach over the past few months. I’m always astounded at how such beautiful formations result from the erosive interactions of just a handful of elements- the density of different sands, slope of the […]

Picnic at Willow Creek

Simple ingredients that pack easily and combine well make for an ideal picnic. As much as I love to cook, some of my favorite meals are simple assemblages, preferably packed as a picnic for a day of hiking or paddling. Nothing tastes better than a few simple ingredients carefully chosen to complement the season and […]