Mark Hansen – Prolific Builder

Mark is one of the original founders of the North House Folk School, and yesterday afternoon I hung out with him  in his shop, wood fire burning in stove. A working shop is a great place to hang out. There were spiffy models of boats and canoes hanging all over. Mark seems to be able to design and build just about anything (including 26 birchbark canoes, mostly in North House classes).

   I wanted to see photos of a number of mobile things he’s built. Since he doesn’t use a computer, I downloaded 381 photos from his camera and suddenly I have a passel of well-designed and well-crafted things for our next book, Wheels and Water: van, sailboat, shed, tent-in-snow, yurt, toboggan…

  I’d been noticing these little carved figures and asked him where they came from. Well, he carved them. More to come from Mark…

About Lloyd Kahn

Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include Shelter, Shelter II (1978), Home Work (2004), Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008), Tiny Homes (2012), and Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:

2 Responses to Mark Hansen – Prolific Builder

  1. Just looked at the pic of Mark's carved figures…

    Has anyone noticed…. the figures are "Happy"…surely smile inducing….

    I suspect Mark is a Happy Artist… carving what he experiences…

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