You can never tell what it’s going to be like on the beach. A few days ago I rode my bike to a distant beach and walked a mile or so on the rocky shore. Tide just starting to come back in. It had rained ¼” the night before and the air was fresh and loaded with negative ions. Surf big. Water with bluish almost metallic sheen. Sun starting to set, no wind, a reddish Winter-going-into-Spring cast to rocks and driftwood. I was thrilled.
Unexpectedly I came across this little driftwood bench. Sat down, toked up, watched sun dropping down to horizon. Reflecting on the instinct to build. Some people just have it, they put things together, like the person who assembled the driftwood for this beach lovers’ perch. (That’s my right foot there.) Good on ya, mate!
I love hitting the road in my go-anywhere 8 year old Toyota Tacoma (4×4, stick shift, 5 speed, 4-cylinder) truck, armed with cameras. This time I forgot my Panasonic Lumix G1 serious camera, just had the little Canon PowerShot G95. I breathe a sigh of relief when I get to farm land and I start scanning for pix. After splitting enough oak to fill my truck at my brother’s, I headed up to Middleton and Harbin Hot Springs. There’s something strangely relaxing about the funkiness and occasional white trash homesteads in lower-income counties.
I was reflecting on finding a balance between computer work and the physical world. I love all the email and blogging I’ve been doing lately. It’s an exciting time, what with the popularity of this new book, and sometimes I get so involved here at the Mac that I forget about two necessary antidotes:
1. Working out (including hiking, anything outdoors and physical) for the body. Getting circulation going, stressing muscles, and stretching. I always feel better.
2. Doing something with my hands. Making a table, turning the compost pile, splitting shakes. Deep-down satisfaction to make something with hands.
Funky lightweight farm building looks like it’s floating.
I When I see old farm buildings like this, I think of converting them into places to live. In Big Sur in the ’60s, I lived happily in a converted chicken coop for a year.
Nice steel sculpture at a place with a sign “Art Forms” on Hwy 121, south of Sonoma
Last month SunRay wanted me to come see his latest creation up near Fort Bragg (Mendocino coast), but I couldn’t get away.
SunRay is not easy to get ahold of. He doesn’t exactly have a smartphone that’s on all the time. But once in a while he’ll call. This call a week ago was fading in and out, but he was describing the “Waterfall House,” just completed, and I caught snatches of what he was saying:
“It’s got a living foundation. It’s grounded into the earth…it ascends to the heavens. The living walls are clay and straw and they breathe. It’s got a living roof…mushrooms and flowers and moss…It’s 6-sided, there’s a timber frame…cut trees in a fairy ring…”
The phone disconnected…
Anyone else saying stuff like and I’d be thinking, yeah, right…But SunRay is the real thing. He’s a true nature spirit. His buildings are poetry. Hey New York Times, do a story on SunRay Kelley!
https://www.sunraykelley.com
Photo inside Waterfall House by Camille Nordgren
Other photos of Waterfall House: https://shltr.net/An3mLK
Outside of Hani’s Man Cave.
SunRay’s a master of “natural materials.” He has a sure touch in making structural frameworks from twisted, gnarly trees. The posts and beams and oak cross pieces here all look like they’ve grown together. The joints are tight – competent carpentry.
“I want my buildings to sing and dance. I don’t want them to be static. Life is motion. Live is movement. The life force is always moving through us.” – P. 59, Builders of the Pacific Coast, where there are 26 pp. on SunRay’s work
SunRay Kelley in “Hani’s Man Cave,” which he built last year in the hills near Middleton (Clear Lake Area), Calif. (His friend Hani has a wife and 4 daughters, and SunRay thought he needed some yang space.)
I got there on a misty December morning, just as he was in the finishing stages. It’s a lovely little building. It improves on the nature surrounding it.
He calls this a “kit.” He cut trees and milled lumber for the 12-sided, 14-½’ wooden yurt on his property in Washington and trucked it down to California. SunRay says he can ship kits like this anywhere: https://www.sunraykelley.com
This interior wall is sculpted cob, a SunRay specialty (the secret is clay), but it’s essentially a wooden building. The porch is framed with locally-harvested manzanita, bay, and pine.
More on pp. 100-101, Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter
On tonight’s walk:
This little SUV looked so tuned in. Maybe it’s a surfer with a tiny home.
Beach was wind-swept and people-less as the storm hovered offshore, except for the lovers hanging out on the groin. Tall dark handsome guy “…from Switzerland,” pretty, good-vibes California girl, a nice couple. I love a deserted beach.
“All the leaves are brown,
And the sky is grey…” – Mamas and Papas on Sirius ’60s radio right now. You know, this is a pretty good song.
Photo in this morning. Mask and bench by prolific artist and Victoria BC resident Godfrey Stephens, who’s featured in Builders of the Pacific Coast (on bench).
I just finished reading the book (on my iPad, natch) and it really moved me. In the personal realm , I never knew what a prick he so often was, but the extent of his involvement in design is staggering. He refined and refined and was pretty totally insane about producing insanely great products. Hard on people, yes, but oh those designs!
I’m typing this on my 11″ MacBook Air at Cafe Roma in North Beach (San Francisco) early this morning and as I’ve probably mentioned, it’s my favorite tool in the world right now. Brilliant elegance.
What’s stayed with me from the book is Steve’s unrelenting refinement upon refinement. It’s made me look at a lot of things I’m doing and think of ways to improve. Rewrite the paragraph one more time. Get my carpentry tighter. Streamline my backpacking gear. It’s looking at everything I do with an eye to improvement, it’s looking at my work through a filter of excellence — well, say rather, improvement.
Last night (thanks to neighbors Patty and Nick), we watched this documentary. 83-year-old fashion photographer Bill Cunningham rides a bike all over Manhattan and sometimes runs like a kid when stalking camera subjects. “We all get dressed for Bill”, says Vogue editor Anna Wintour (Wikipedia). He has a joy in life and is irresistibly good-humored. Toward the end of the movie he says: “He who seeks beauty shall find it.”
Bill Cunningham New York Trailer from Gavin McWait on Vimeo.
(Click on “Vimeo,” lower right, for larger size video.)
https://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/billcunninghamnewyork/
Which reminded me of a unique fashion photographer, Scott Schuman, who documents homemade fashion all over the world:
Website: https://www.thesartorialist.com/Scott’s bio: https://www.thesartorialist.com/biography/
You can never tell what it’s going to be like on the beach. A few days ago I rode my bike to a distant beach and walked a mile or so on the rocky shore. Tide just starting to come back in. It had rained ¼” the night before and the air was fresh and loaded with negative ions. Surf big. Water with bluish almost metallic sheen. Sun starting to set, no wind, a reddish Winter-going-into-Spring cast to rocks and driftwood. I was thrilled.
