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 detail soon about the NOMO Exhibition, but here’s a preview of my “Legend of Lumberjack Surfing” installation:

The Legend of Lumberjack Surfing

“There is a little known legend that surfing has early 19^th century origins on the Western shores of Lake Michigan, separate from its more ancient roots on the islands of the South Pacific.

When timber rafts were floated down Wisconsin’s rivers to be shipped to far off urban centers, large slabs of wood occasionally broke loose along the lake and washed ashore. Enterprising lumberjacks and boat-builders often rescued the timbers by drifting them offshore, standing atop them and paddling them to beachfront workshops, occasionally attaching sails to ease the journey. When the surf was heavy, the maritime lumberjacks beached the timbers by riding waves to shore, steering with a long wooden paddle. Over time, the activity of riding waves became an end in itself, and the ‘lumberjack surfers’ learned to shape the rough sawn planks for better performance in the waves.

By the early 20^th century, the ‘lumberjack surfers’ adapted wooden boards to ride on land by attaching crude wheels to their undersides, thus inventing an early form of the skateboard. Many of these ‘trapper’s skateboards’ were made from stretchers originally used to tan wolf hides. By the middle of the 20^th century, experimental skateboards were commonly made from discarded, wooden alpine and water skis, which were rapidly being replaced by fiberglass.”

Another part of the NOMO Exhibition at Kohler Arts features longboard skate graphics I designed collaboratively, like the Northern Pike Longboard (above) drawn by Mary Whitehall and Zak Worth. The burnt/etched deck is part of a series depicting fish native to Lake Michigan

Tagged: appropriate technology, bike culture, contemporary art, craft philosophy, deep craft, DIY, furniture design, green design, innovation, kohler arts, longboard, public art, scott Constable, skateboard, slow design, surfing, sustainability, tall tale, traditional craft, vernacular architecture, woodworking, wowhaus

Jefferson planted ‘mad dog’ at Monticello, brought from the West by Lewis and Clark

Ene and I had made three cross-country road trips before our most recent family pilgrimage. The first three punctuated a single year almost twenty years ago, when we negotiated a move from the East Coast to California. We made an exploratory trek through Canada, up into Alaska’s panhandle and down the pacific coast, then a meandering southern ramble back east across the southwest and the Deep South, and finally, a no-nonsense westward beeline traversing the middle, our stuff in tow. Despite dissimilarities, I think of each journey as a rite of passage, a chance to drop everything, check the pulse of American life and open up to the happenstance of the open road.

Twenty years later, as we zig-zagged our way back East across the continent, I realized what a Californian perspective I’ve gained, especially since our move from Oakland to the wild Sonoma Coast. Traveling east to west, ‘nature’ is interpreted through the abstract filters of ‘culture’. I found the opposite to be the case as we car-camped our way over the Sierras, across the desert and into the ancient canyons leading into the Rockies, down to the High Plains and over the Mississippi River to the ‘old country’, back into Culture.

postcards depicting Elvis’ Graceland abound inside the site’s many gift shops

Being short on time and long on ideas, we decided to organize the last leg of our eastbound journey around just two sequential destinations, Graceland and Monticello. Both paragons of American domestic architecture, albeit for nearly opposite reasons, the two iconic homesteads present the polarity of American civilization. In many ways, Jefferson invented the West, and Monticello both anticipates and celebrates its utopian origins and vast potential. Elvis is more a victim than a victor of a more contemporary fame, and his architectural opus, unlike Monticello, is a dystopic retreat from public life, more like the prototype for today’s exurbs. Both celebrity sites share a Southern love of neoclassicism, which lends itself naturally to kitsch.

However crude its manifestation, it is ultimately up to Public Taste to preserve assets of nature and culture, both low and high.

Tagged: aesthetics, cross country, deep craft, elvis, geography, graceland, monticello, road trip, vernacular architecture

satellite view of the village of Nicasio, CA, built around a baseball diamond

Driving the back way from our studio on the Sonoma Coast to Marin County to install a project over the past few months, I’ve fallen in love with the village of Nicasio. Its tiny town center consists of a church, a general store, a roadhouse/bar, post office, Druid’s Hall, real estate office, and a few houses, all surrounding a baseball diamond that comprises the Town Square. Nestled in the San Geronimo Valley, Nicasio connects the main drainages of Nicasio Creek and its tributaries up to the ridgelines. The buildings are all authentic examples of late 19^th century rural American vernacular, all the more poignant when the focal point is a well-maintained baseball diamond.

Nicasio’s classic Town Square is a baseball diamond

dairy cattle graze around St. Mary’s Church, which flanks the baseball diamond

Outbuildings like this are still in use and shine when the Buckeye blooms

Ancient black locust trees dwarf this charming cottage on Nicasio’s Town Square

Tagged: baseball, california coast, deep craft, nicasio, scott Constable, sonoma coast, town square, vernacular architecture, watershed

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 way the sand behaves at a certain angle of incline, at very low tides, makes a lovely tree structure that micro-cosmically mimics the contours of drainage patterns constituting the local watershed.

mussels cluster on rocks alongside barnacles, starfish and anemone

The Beach Fleas (Orchestoidea) are everywhere along Doran

To follow the progress of this wowhaus public art project, please click here and scroll down.

Tagged: aesthetics, california coast, deep craft, innovation, phenology, public art, scott Constable, slow design, sonoma coast, watershed, wowhaus

traversing Greenland, 1930 (image: public domain)

I am truly honored that Russell Baldon, acting Chair of CCA’s Wood/Furniture Program, invited me to be the ‘Wornick Visiting Distinguished Professor of Wood Arts’ for Fall 2010. I’ll be teaching a studio-based ‘Atelier’ course for the semester that will give me an opportunity to share my studio and field research with students; the process will be cumulatively documented on these pages. It has been over seven years since I’ve taught at CCA and I’m excited to work collaboratively with students to prototype new ideas in woodcraft related to planning and executing a micro-expedition. Here is a brief course description:

MICRO EXPEDITION

Expedition into the unknown has played a perennial role in human history. Whether in the service of survival, expansion, inquiry or piracy, people continue to explore the world through the vehicle of expedition.

MICRO EXPEDITION will be a meditation upon the nature of exploration, with specific focus upon framing a contemporary sense of the unknown and developing the vessels related to a particular expedition, with emphasis on woodcraft. During the semester, students will plan a waterborne expedition, build a small fleet of craft appropriate to the waterway and intended goals, as well as any peripheral gear suitable to wood construction. The class will work as a collaborative atelier, learning the basics of wooden boat building through the construction of minimalist craft, to be launched for a 2-3 day voyage, with destinations determined collaboratively. Guest lecturers will include a Bay Area naturalist, a maritime historian and a naval architect.

Tagged: appropriate technology, california coast, cca, contemporary art, deep craft, expedition, furniture design, innovation, invention, Russell Baldon, scott Constable, woodworking

‘Adams Angling’ is my favorite catalog for thinking about planning an expedition

The transition to fair weather from a long and gray, chilly wet season always has me dreaming about excursions to the wilder reaches of Northern California, testing my wits in the face of a more bare mode of survival. While it’s been years since I’ve acted on the impulse, I consider myself well-prepared for the opportunity should it present itself, hopefully when I am not so (gratefully) burdened with Projects.

Meanwhile, I’m content with the vicarious thrill of thumbing through the pages of Adams Angling, my favorite catalog of antiquarian books and gear related to hunting, fishing, wilderness survival and Natural History. Somehow, the act of reading the catalog is almost better than the books themselves, and brings me closer to the actual experience I desire. Just knowing that this obscure body of knowledge exists and is accessible placates my wanderlust, and I can shift my focus from ‘thinking about planning an expedition‘ to the demanding tasks at hand.

Tagged: adam's angling, appropriate technology, california coast, craft philosophy, deep craft, fishing, scott Constable, traditional craft

The remainder of our week continued to be full of surprises as we mined Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and its environs along the shores of Lake Michigan for activity relevant to our NOMO project. As Ene and I process our research and  interactions and begin to shape it into an exhibition/exposition to be staged at Kohler Arts Center this summer, I wanted to share a string of images and some rambling commentary below:

I’m always surprised and delighted to find such a thriving maritime culture and history in Sheboygan, where perch, salmon, trout, whitefish, chub and smelt are still fished commercially.

We made a habit of buying fish at Schwartz’s Fish Market, where they still smoke their own fish and tally the price by hand, just as they did in 1912 when the market was founded. Friday night is when every bar and restaurant in town features a ‘fish fry’, which is not to be missed. All generations gather at familiar neighborhood spots for drinks (the ‘old fashioned’ is the traditional fave), live music (usually with a German theme), and astounding salad bars, rife with delicious potato salads, herring, pickled beets, slaws and salad greens. The fish offerings change seasonally, but tend to feature lightly breaded, fried perch, wall-eye and cod.

a birch forest along the lakeshore south of town

Among many antique tools and ‘plausible historic artifacts’ I culled for the installation in the Kohler Arts gallery, this Dutch plate captured the feeling I’d like to conjure.

I found a wood mill in the back of a red barn just outside of town

Our friend Kristofer Rusch brought us on a road trip that included a stop at ‘Mike the Recycler’.

A diolorama of a Red Cross volunteer at the Sheboygan History Museum

Portion of a WPA-era mural ( 1935), by Schomer Lichtner at the Sheboygan Post Office

drawing by Sheboygan artist Zak Worth

another drawing by Sheboygan artist Zak Worth

We’ve been staying in a historic, salt-box house that borders the James Tellen Woodland Sculpture Garden, and I have been daily blown away by his artistry with such a rude material as concrete. The house was built as a boyscout clubhouse, and has the following word carved into the stones flanking the fireplace: Kind, Courteous, Friendly, Helpful, Loyal, Trustworthy, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, Reverent. These are all apt descriptions of the general populace in this region.

Tagged: deep craft, james tellen, kohler arts, scott Constable, skateboard, surfing, vernacular, vernacular architecture, zanzi

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. The Pacific Razor Clam is ideal, softer than the East Coast equivalent, but hard enough to make a clean scratch, and loaded with calcium carbonate to leave a crisp white line.

Tagged: aesthetics, california coast, deep craft, green design, scott Constable, sonoma coast, sustainability, traditional craft, woodworking

I met surfboard maker Andy Lambrecht on our last day in Sayulita, Mexico. I noticed his handmade  wooden board by the beached fishing boats as we were packing up and getting ready to catch a bus back to Puerto Vallarta. Based in British Columbia, Andy makes a variety of hollow surfboards using reclaimed woods from local sources, which he typically re-saws and book-matches in elegant patterns- imperfections like nail holes are artfully incorporated into each board’s unique composition.

Andy is on paternity leave and will be in Sayulita with his wife and their two young daughters for three months, surfing and hanging out (talk about a health care program!). He brought along his shaping tools and has already landed a commission- a surfboard in exchange for work on his ailing car after the arduous journey southward. I look forward to keeping in touch with Andy Lambrecht, and have invited him and his family for a visit on their way back up the coast.

Tagged: andy lambrecht, deep craft, green design, sayulita, scott Constable, surfing, sustainability, woodworking

Sayulita, Nayarit, Mexico

Spending time in Sayulita always restores my faith in humanity. For whatever combination of reasons- its remoteness through jungle along the Pacific Coast, cut-off from major roads until relatively recently; its consistently overhead, left/right break; its laid back balance of bohemian surf culture and traditional fishing village- everyone is unabashedly happy in Sayulita. Like guests at a well-hosted party, everyone has a unique role to play, the machinery oiled by mutual trust and respect. When the ‘little things’ that comprise daily life take precedence over the ‘big things’ outside our control, everyone takes charge. When the inverse is the case, the opposite is true.

‘Le Corbusier meets Gilligan’s Island’ characterizes the playful architecture of Sayulita

Tagged: longboard, sayulita, scott Constable, surfing, vernacular