Environmental Concern

Reflections Inspired by Tiny Houses
A 14′ Tiny House inspired by Japanese Aesthetics (from the Baluchan website)

As earlier posts of mine attest, I have been interested for some time in the Tiny House movement, which has now become a widespread phenomenon. Whole Tiny House communities are being developed, and Tiny House construction designs have been proposed as an alternative approach to addressing homelessness. Reflecting on this movement, and the broad appeal examples of Tiny Houses seem to have, I have given some thought to what this development in small scale architecture may represent, and to what it may tell us about how we want to live.

I can see an impulse similar to the pursuit and enjoyment of living in a Tiny House in some attractive parallels, which also represent a quest for discerning a simpler way to live. Quite aside from a specific focus on contemporary examples of Tiny Houses, many people appear to have an interest in reading books like Thoreau’s Walden, or those by John Muir. I continue to meet folks who like the idea of having a small boat in which one can actually ’cruise,’ even on local lakes. And still others seem to share my fascination with living environments inspired by Japanese aesthetics.

An interior shot of the Baluchan Bonzai 14′ Tiny House

If these musings seem familiar, learning more about the Tiny House movement is worth pursuing. Here are some observations I have made in the course of my own reflections on the current popularity of this movement: 

First, the appeal of Tiny Houses has much to do with the process of rediscovering, and learning more about the beauty of living simply. And therefore, about more than managing to accept being without some things, but actually doing well with less. Marie Kondo’s videos and published writing have attracted a good deal of attention regarding the desirability of organizing our household belongings, and paring down what we have toward living with what we truly love.

Viewing and reflecting on examples of Tiny Houses can aid one’s discernment regarding needs vs wants. Most of us have probably considered this distinction from time to time, and have likely also experienced some frustration with our halting efforts to enact our reflection upon it. We know we have wants, which often masquerade as needs, while we may not sufficiently consider the potential value to us of having wants that are correlated with our needs. After all, a premise of this post rests on a paradox: the assumption that I not only want to live more simply, but that I may also need to!

The kitchen space between the bathroom and the small main living area

Here, briefly noted, are some potential benefits that may come from spending time in a Tiny House:

  • Living off the grid becomes a much more realistic goal when choosing to live in a Tiny House. Tiny Houses also allow for mobility in relation to one’s surroundings, even if it is not a frequently exercised opportunity. Changes in one’s locale can lead to learning opportunities.
  • Those who build their own or who choose to do maintenance work on a Tiny House are more likely to learn how to use, and use more ably, simple and hand-powered tools.
  • Tiny Houses are well suited as places in which we can experience solitude as a positive aspect of our lives, while also providing an excellent context for significant times spent with others. 
  • Living or spending time in a Tiny House may allow us to have increased time for personal reflection, and an opportunity further to discern our vocation, in addition to our more usual absorption with occupational concerns.
  • Tiny Houses therefore have the potential to be places in which we read more, and spend less time consuming social media or watching videos. While every living place for which we have some care requires time and attention, the theory behind choosing a Tiny House as a place to live assumes that we can devote more time to actually living, rather than preparing to live. Reading makes the world bigger and our lives richer.

For much of the above, and as a both–and rather than an either/or starting point, I commend considering adding a form of a ‘Tiny House’ to your present circumstances rather than making a radical change from them. Experimenting with what can be done with less, while also still retaining one’s present home, can be instructive. This can be accomplished by, for example, purchasing a used but well-equipped small RV. We have recently seen some interesting examples on the road, and ones that could fit in a standard home garage.

For us, it has been our 1988 24 ft trailerable sailboat that has provided this kind of learning opportunity. With its relatively small cabin (about half the length of the boat), comfortable berths (or bunks), a camping stove, cooler, portable toilet, and cockpit which serves as a small ‘back porch,’ we can meet most of our daily needs for a week or more at a time. The slip for our boat is under $200/ month, including electricity and water connections, if needed (ie, if the boat is not yet off-the-grid-ready, though our boat is now thus equipped). DAYSTAR has become our floating ‘tiny house’ or ‘cottage.’

Ably and effectively inhabiting this principle of beautiful simplicity is turning out to be a lifelong project for me, and I believe this is also true for others. I am a neophyte in the process. Perhaps my readers have some similar experience with this ongoing process!

Earl Young’s Boulder Park Charlevoix Houses
Earl Young’s Boulder Manor, built for himself, as seen on a recent day

Summer visitors to Charlevoix encounter at least two things about the area: first, that this part of Michigan is a haven for boat lovers and especially cruisers on the Great Lakes; and, second, that the city of Charlevoix is the home of Earl Young’s so-called ‘mushroom houses.’ The first observation regarding boats and the appealingly clear lake water is easily recognized. The second association with the area takes a bit of discernment, usually gained from seeing brochures or the small electric carts evident in town bearing the label, “Mushroom Houses Tours.”

A pleasant walk around Charlevoix while viewing the many houses that Earl Young designed and built in the community reveals that his approach to home design was not uniform, and that his work avoided that to which the wider community has also not succumbed – becoming a caricature of itself. For he could have approached his design work in such a way as simply to repeat and imitate prior successes, pressing forward as so many architects have done to inaugurate a particular and distinctive style in home design. Instead, Young consistently displayed his overriding commitment to his chosen materials – stone and stone-related products. Therefore, when at the age of 35 in 1924, and in buying a tract of land adjacent to the Lake Michigan shoreline, he built ten houses with enough variation among them that later homes constructed by others are frequently confused with those of his own design. Young gave the tract along with its homes the fitting label of Boulder Park.

The Owl House, named for the arched front windows

This variability in the architectural character of the Boulder Park homes helps us to begin to recognize how the common ascription to Earl Young, of being the mushroom house architect, is in some ways a misnomer for him. A few of his houses nicely justify the label, given their firm rootedness to their sites, their often low or extending rooflines with irregular surfaces, and his heavy use of large stones and boulders in a number of them. Yet, Young was equally comfortable specifying limestone cut in horizontal block slabs and even commercially available brick or block products with which to construct walls with traditional uniformly-spaced layers of mortar. We may not be enamored with the some of the results of his work, but I think most of us can identify with Young’s lifelong intention to remain true to his materials and to the sites in which he set them.

A 1929 limestone cottage in Boulder Park, known for the rolled edges of the eaves

Two neighboring homes in Boulder Park illustrate Young’s consistency of intent, and flexibility with regard to ‘style.’ Boulder Manor, built in 1928 (displayed at the top of this post), sits in close proximity to the Pagoda House, built in 1934, seen below.

The Pagoda House

My favorite among the Boulder Park houses is the home that Young built for himself, called Boulder Manor (top photo). It is constructed with massive pieces of stone and boulders from the area, and features a matching smaller playhouse for his daughters that has a working fireplace.

Rear view of Boulder Manor along with the playhouse for the Young’s daughters

In some ways Earl Young was a bundle of contradictions, an idiosyncratic visionary who was known to tell some clients what they needed in terms of a home, and yet also one who could reside with an out of town family for a considerable period of time so as to get to know how they lived before designing a home for them. He had a consistent love of rough, ‘undressed’ stone to be used as found, and at the same time a willingness to use stone in a very conventional way. Young was famous for wanting to do virtually everything ‘his way,’ often to the consternation of others, including town leaders. And yet, one house of his in Boulder Park was the result of a client convincing him to build a home based on a design plan found in a women’s magazine, the 1933 Enchanted Cottage with its very English-looking windows (seen below).

The Enchanted Cottage

The best introduction to Earl Young’s Charlevoix houses is a widely available book by the photographer, Mike Barton, titled, Mushroom Houses of Charlevoix. Filled with color photographs, and documenting every one of Young’s structures built in his home town, the book provides superb photographs, and better ones than I am able to provide.

Earl Young’s Imprint on Charlevoix
Exterior view of Earl Young’s Weathervane Inn

As a young man from the rural north of Michigan, Earl Young aspired to produce ‘natural houses’ in the spirit of Frank Lloyd Wright, his inspiration and model for what became his own vocation. Young never studied with Wright, but the latter’s design spirit influenced him throughout his life. Though Young’s impact as an architect was essentially local (he designed only one house outside of Charlevoix), the present-day promotion of Charlevoix as a cultural destination is much in his debt for the way this community has come to be known as the home of the “mushroom houses.”

Earl Young

Earl Young studied architecture for one year at the University of Michigan. From the beginning he was impatient with a curriculum shaped by the kind of slavishness to European precedents that FL Wright also criticized. Young then returned to his hometown of Charlevoix to build houses, practice real estate in the family business, and sell insurance. He left the university program with his independent vision and architectural vocation intact, from which he never seemed to waver.

The Weathervane Inn adjacent to the Pine River channel and lift bridge

One recent appraisal of Young’s portfolio of buildings has suggested a neologism with which to describe his work, lithotecture, based on the Greek word for stone. For Earl Young did not simply value the utility of stone; he loved stone, and especially large boulders. He is remembered for having had a remarkable memory for the exact location, size, and texture of examples he had seen, collected, or stored away for future use. His profound appreciation for these materials, and the creative possibilities toward which they might be employed, is much in evidence throughout the older portion of Charlevoix in the many houses and other buildings he built and or designed, as well as in those influenced by them.

One of Earl Young’s Boulders Park homes (more of which are to be featured in a future post)

Earl Young’s impact upon the visual character of Charlevoix might be compared to a rather different example in architecture and in community design, the near-universal adoption of ‘the adobe style’ in Santa Fe, which has become a predominant approach to restoration, renewal, and original architectural creations. In the parallel example of Young’s case, his impact was through his way of being true to context by his use of stone, especially in highly creative ways. So pervasive has become his influence upon the development of Charlevoix that many other and more recent builders have been drawn to imitate Young’s extensive and sometimes whimsical use of locally available natural geologic materials. Given my own experience of living in south Louisiana, where hardly any naturally-occurring stone is to be found, I am struck by the abiding evidence of Young’s legacy as a community-based builder.

Two long-ago initiatives by Earl Young in particular serve to distinguish Charlevoix in the eyes of visitors, the Weathervane Inn, and the waterfront park adjacent to the city marina. Young replaced an aged mill along the edge of the Pine River channel with an attractive inn of his own design and construction, and he convinced town leaders to replace obsolete warehouses along the waterfront with what has become a four acre rolling green expanse of lawn. Both locations have become popular and much used gathering places for visitors as well as for Charlevoix residents.

The terrace overlook above the marina office – modern stonework in the Earl Young style

The marina waterfront as it has been developed in recent years demonstrates Earl Young’s lasting influence upon Charlevoix’s economic and cultural development. Realizing some of the potential latent within Young’s prescient inspiration for the land clearing that enabled the new park, several notable new structures have been built, among them a new marina office and locker rooms, and a dancing or synchronized fountain by its door.

Part of the natural-look landscaping surrounding the marina office

Landscaped around the marina office is a northern Michigan nature garden incorporating a human-made stream flowing between several shaded pools that contain rainbow trout. Also gracing the open green space of the park is a bandshell for weekly summer musical events, where concert-goers overlook the harbor docks and boat slips. Each of these structures, though constructed well after Young’s lifetime, reflects his vision for the beauty of stone laid up in asymmetrical curving walls.

The Earl Young influenced bandshell overlooking the marina and Round Lake harbor

Earl Young’s profound attachment to working with local geological material evinces a lifelong devotion to what can be accomplished through building with massive boulders, each weighing multiples tons. The best place to begin to appreciate this is by a visit to the previously mentioned Weathervane Inn, the earliest of his few public buildings. The massive fireplace assembled from a seeming heap of boulders, has one large stone that weighed 9 tons, so heavy that it caused a dislocation in the foundation prepared for it.

Exterior view of Earl Young’s massive Weathervane fireplace
Interior view of the Weathervane fireplace

In a subsequent post I plan to present and offer a brief reflection upon Earl Young’s Charlevoix residential design and construction projects, most commonly known as his ‘mushroom houses.’ In all of his work, Earl Young showed himself to be something of an unforgettable local genius, whose endearing and wonder-producing legacy of unique work has transformed his community over the decades.

A Tao of Seeing: Reflections Inspired by Feng Shui
Michael Pollan’s writer’s hut, intentionally situated by a boulder on the brow of a hill

Recently, I observed my middle son moving a black plastic pond module around in a small space in his New Orleans courtyard. As he moved the container that would soon have fish in it, he tried situating the vessel in various ways, in relation to a tree, a fence, some potted plants, and an existing low stone wall. He is not a student or practitioner of feng shui, but I believe I was seeing some of those principles at work in his decision-making.

Western readers may have heard of feng shui, the Asian philosophical approach to discerning the unseen forces that affect objects and their balance in nature. It gives attention to the metaphysical or non-material energies thought to be at work upon or within the world around us. We might say that this approach provides a Tao of seeing, or a natural way of perceiving within and around surface phenomena to the underlying dynamisms that are believed to affect what happens in nature.

This notion that there are unseen forces at work in the world is an idea that is receiving something of a revival in Western Christian spirituality. This is noticeable when people refer to a concept attributable to the Celtic tradition, in which it has become common to refer to “thin places. “ These are places where the veil between the material and the ethereal or the heavenly seems temporarily dissolved. Another parallel here between East and West may lie in the quest within Christian spirituality for the goal of harmony and balance between people and the created world.

However, my reflections here constitute an aesthetic rather than a philosophical or historical inquiry. I am interested in the dynamics of movement we perceive in the circumstances that we encounter, and less in the metaphysical forces or energies that may be present within them. At the outset, however, I want acknowledge how a nuanced Asian approach can be an authentic route toward a culturally-informed appreciation of the phenomena we encounter, especially from a historically Asian perspective.

As we look at paintings in the context of Western culture, one factor we discern assesses composition and attends to the way our seeing is drawn from one part of a larger image to another. This dynamic is often an artist-intended aspect of an overall composition. Sight lines in garden design and arrangement provide another example, as does the architectural arrangement of space in buildings.

Attention given by Western designers to feng shui is sometimes criticized as being a superficial application of historically and philosophically nuanced ideas. But I want to give credit to ways in which our sensitivity toward perceiving movement and direction is a genuine factor that is available for analysis and articulation. We notice this when we encounter both two dimensional compositions as well as three dimensional spaces and the objects we find in them. We can always come to know more about what we see.  Because what we see is something that is there, not simply what we believe, or are disposed or inclined to see.

An Asian garden said to be designed according to feng shui principles

Motion, balance between forces, spatial arrangement of objects, and the dynamic relationships that are visible because they exist between and among these variables, continue to grab my interest. Contrasts between colors and textures, as well as between sizes and shapes, play a significant role.  Additionally, the perceived difference between what is natural and things that are humanly fashioned is equally significant, as is our perception of the criteria for what constitutes that which we consider to be natural. These are among the factors that help account for our sensitivity towards and interest in these many observable variables, and our common quest for purpose and meaning in the contexts where we find ourselves.

Motions and balance as we find these factors in Wassily Kandinsky’s painting, Several Circles

Painters, sculptors, and architects, seriously consider these factors within visual and spatial compositions. The painter, Wassily Kandinsky, and the architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, provide two examples of those who also perceived a spiritual dimension within their creative work.

If so, we –  as caring lay observers of the world and of the things and places among which we find ourselves – should give deference to this evident fact. For we can all be thoughtful, as people often are inclined to be, about what we see, touch, and experience when we interact with visual phenomena.

I find myself increasingly sensitive to these aspects of our appreciation for Beauty, and endeavor to be more mindful about them. I am intrigued by possible parallels that may exist between Eastern metaphysical interpretations of visual phenomena and more familiar approaches to what we see that are shaped by Western aesthetics. Especially as these familiar approaches are described and developed within our artistic and architectural best practices.

Allan West: Japanese Culture and Art

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In more than one way, Allan West is an unusual artist. His life and work have been deeply imbued by the spiritual aesthetics of Japanese culture and its traditional art of painting. For over forty years, he has dedicated himself to Nihonga, the less and less practiced method of painting using minerals for pigments, mixed with the liquid medium of a glue made from deer protein. This approach to painting has been practiced consistently in Japan, where luminous paintings from the 11th century can still be appreciated for their original beauty. The closest parallel in Western art is egg tempera painting, in which painters in earlier centuries mixed pigment with egg yolks instead of the modern practice of mixing pigments with oil or an acrylic medium.

Allan West was born and grew up in Washington, D.C., and his sojourn in Japan began in a period of mission work there as a member of the Latter Day Saints. Two factors transformed the vector of his life. He came to realize that he had an affinity with Japanese culture, especially with its artistic tradition, and he was struck by the Japanese sensitivity to living in harmony as much as is possible with the natural world.

More particularly, with his memory of pursuing painting from the time of his childhood, he recalls his own experiments with mixing pigments with various liquids to achieve a more fluid paint medium. This predisposed him to accept an observation offered by a viewer of his early work, who told him that his preferred approach to painting had a long tradition in Japan. As a result, West moved to Japan in 1987, with his wife and children, to learn from that tradition. He has lived and worked in Tokyo, ever since.

In a short video introduction to the artist, released by the Prime Minister’s Office in Japan, Allan West shares the following about his life’s work (screenshot above, and link below):

I use the Japanese painting technique to express the beauty and essence of the natural seasons. It has been 40 years since I moved to Japan, attracted by the traditional pigments and techniques of Japanese painting. Japanese natural materials can retain their clear vibrancy for more than a thousand years. I’m proud to inherit the tradition of Japanese painting and its wisdom that cherishes nature’s beauty and harmony with humankind. Through my art I’d like to convey the appeal of Japanese culture to the world.

With these few words, spoken in a soft and nuanced voice in the video, Allan West is saying much. Having returned to Japan with the intent of learning a method or a technique, he had the sensitivity to realize that he needed to learn the Japanese language and let its culture become ingrained within him in order for him to be able to practice Nihonga painting with some degree of integrity. The photo below contains a number of important cues concerning what West has received and learned from the tradition of which he describes himself as an inheritor.

Allan West paints sitting on the floor in a Japanese way, on mats woven from rice-straw. As has been noted, the paints he uses are made up of ground minerals mixed with a glue-like medium of deer protein, paints which he values for their fluid quality. Hence, the surfaces that are to be painted need also to rest upon the floor, to avoid the paint running. Many of the surfaces upon which West works are large in size, like the sometimes wall-sized decorative folding screens for which he has become known. To be able to paint such expansive surfaces in their totality, instead of panel by panel, the artist designed a narrow rolling platform, allowing him to reach any area of a full-sized screen (as in the image above). This photo also displays West’s use of vibrant mineral-based colors as well as metalic foils and powders, such as gold leaf, some of which are found in the glass containers on the shelves behind him.

Allan West’s present Yanaka, Tokyo, studio

Unlike some artists, both Western and Asian, Allan West welcomes visitors to his studio, and actively encourages those who are curious not only to view his art, but to witness his creative process. To this end, his present studio, much modified into a traditional Japanese-looking structure from its prior use as an automotive maintenance facility, has large and welcoming sliding panels and windows, through which those walking by can view him painting. Through providing this access to his creative work, he hopes to promote a sustainable future for Nihonga, and to persuade Japanese visitors in particular that even an American immigrant can appreciate, learn, and become proficient in an ancient Japanese art form.

The following images provide examples of Allan West’s beautiful work:

The following image displays the interior of Allan West’s attractive and welcoming studio and gallery building:

 

Readers who wish to become more acquainted with Allan West and his work might view the YouTube video mentioned above (the link is here). Allan West’s studio and gallery can also be visited in a virtual way by clicking this link.

The Beauty of Philip Simmons’ Charleston Ironwork

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Gate to the Philip Simmons Memorial Garden, Anson Street, Charleston (featuring a Simmons design)

 

Philip Simmons, was a blacksmith who spent his life and working career in Charleston, SC, where much of his work is preserved by homeowners, collectors, and a foundation dedicated to honoring his legacy. Along with his lifelong body of ironwork, he has been described as a national treasure. Born in 1912 in the Old South, he received a very limited education and apprenticed himself at an early age to blacksmiths he saw in his Charleston neighborhood. Eight decades of work in a blacksmith’s shop followed as he pursued what some might call a trade craft, and which in his hands was truly an art.

Mary E. Lyons has written a book about Simmons for young persons, which includes some compelling photos of his work. She offers this introduction to the artist: “Philip Simmons began his career as an untrained boy. Now he is called the Dean of Blacksmiths by professional smiths across the country. His memories show that skill and patience take years of work. They also prove that everyone can achieve both. An honored artist, teacher, and businessman, Philip Simmons is the working person’s hero.”

Though the circumstances in which he lived and worked were modest, he is warmly remembered by his home city, and he has been commemorated by a marker at the Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park (shown above), by the preservation of his home and studio, as well as by a high school named in his honor. Numerous examples of Simmons’ ironwork can be seen on walking tours in Charleston, in the course of which one can enter, through a gate fashioned by Simmons, a memorial garden for named for him maintained by the Garden Club of Charleston.

An egret, one of Simmons’ favorite motifs in his ironwork

In addition to representations of egrets, other images such as palmetto fronds, hearts, fish and serpents, number among those images often featured in Simmons’ ironwork. The artist’s choice of these images reflected his sensitivity to the locale in which he was raised, both Daniel Island where he was born, and then Charleston and its low country and aquatic surroundings.

A major turning point in Simmon’s life’s work came with an unexpected opportunity brought to him when he was 64, an age when many contemplate retirement. He was invited to participate in the 1976 Bicentennial commemorative Festival of American Folklife to take place on the Mall by the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Asked to craft a gate onsite during the event, Simmons wondered about the imagery that he might select for the project. Thinking about images that would reflect where he was from, he settled on the moon, stars in the sky, the rolling surface of water, and fish. This combination of images reflected, in his mind, the night sky sparkling upon the waters of the two rivers that form Charleston Harbor. The resulting gate, which has come to be known as the Star and Fish Gate, was purchased by the Smithsonian Institution (image below).

Philip Simmons’ crafting of the Star and Fish Gate in a temporary workshop set up on the Washington Mall, complete with a portable foundry and anvil, attracted a great deal of attention during the festival, and resulted in the artist gaining national attention. Among those taking an interest in Simmons’ work, and then helping bring it to a wider audience, was John Michael Vlach, a professor at George Washington University. Vlach published a biography of Simmons in 1981, which may have helped those at the National Endowment for the Arts to take note of Simmons’ lifetime of achievement in the field of blacksmithing. In 1982, the NEA awarded Simmons with a National Heritage Fellowship, the United States government’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. Other honors followed, including the Order of the Palmetto, his home state’s highest honor, as well as induction into the South Carolina Hall of Fame. During his lifetime, he was referred to as “a living national treasure.”

Simmons’ iron work incorporating the medical symbol of a caduceus, and a fish representing an aspect of his home region as well as the Christian faith

In spite of all of the accolades and honors he received later in life, Philip Simmons continued with humility to devote himself to his art, and to teaching younger aspirants and apprentices who wished to become proficient themselves in creating beautiful yet also functional ironwork. Despite the very significant cultural differences between his approach and those of Japanese craftspeople, I find Simmons’ approach to his life’s work characteristic of the best of what is often described as folk art, work that is appreciated for its beauty without necessarily calling attention to the artisan who made it.

Displayed below are images of a number of Simmons’ creations as a blacksmith.

A Simmons gate for St. Philip Episcopal Church, Charleston

The cover of Mary Lyons’ book for young persons, featuring Philip Simmons at work on a piece of scrolled iron

 

The full title of John Michael Vlach’s book, mentioned above, is: Charleston Blacksmith: The Work of Philip Simmons. The book includes a map of Charleston showing the location of Simmons’ works, as well as brief descriptions of them.

From Dream to Reality: Michael Pollan and His Writing House

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In an updated preface to his book, A Place of My Own: the Architecture of Daydreams, Michael Pollan laments how some readers approach his book expecting something like a “how to” guide to building their own writer’s hut or shack. Though he does provide a wealth of detail concerning the construction methods he used, the book’s richness lies in its thoughtful engagement with the idea of human shelter and its function in architecture. Of particular note is the attention he gives to the French writer, Gaston Bachelard, whose book, The Poetics of Space, prompts a good deal of reflection by Pollan. The author quotes Bachelard with words that obviously inspired the subtitle of A Place of My Own: “I should say: the house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.”

Michael Pollan dreams of building and inhabiting what we might call his own writer’s studio in the woods behind his Connecticut home. As he muses about its possibilities, he considers potential designs in dialogue with his chosen site for the small building. From a book by the English geographer, Jay Appleton, he gleans the insight that ideal human shelters provide two dialectically interconnected values, ‘prospect’ and ‘refuge.’ A shelter conducive for human flourishing provides both the opportunity to view and appreciate one’s surroundings while at the same time providing a secure resting place. Achieving these twin goals becomes one of Pollan’s priorities for his little writing hut.

At the same time, while embarking upon this project to build his place for writing, he acknowledges that the endeavor also provides the occasion for him to examine the idea of architecture, and its contemporary role in Western society. He discovers – through a gift subscription to Progressive Architecture magazine – that the field has increasingly become focused on the exploration and expression of ideas, leaving behind a principal focus upon providing beautiful yet practically useful spaces and structures for human habitation and work.

The interior of Michael Pollan’s writing house (note the daybed in the foreground)

Pollan realizes that what he wants to build is not something that points to something else, or to a set of ideas and concepts (as is the case with some contemporary practitioners in the field of design). Instead, he wants a structure that he can use for everyday work, for reading, and as a place where occasionally he can have a nap. With his aversion to the little building becoming an artistic statement rather than something truly useful, Pollan’s book reminds me of a principal theme in Tom Wolfe’s splendid little book, From Bauhaus to Our House.

Especially in the first two chapters, Michael Pollan offers a set of thought provoking and historically informed reflections on the nature and purpose of architecture, which are shaped in a writerly way. As much as I was drawn to the concrete aspects of his project – as in his account of his search for the ideal design of the window through which he would look while writing – I found his engagement with the theoretical aspects of the project to be very compelling. A good example of the latter is his reflection on our conscious experience of form and pattern in buildings, and our unconscious experience of the spaces we encounter and through which we move. Other examples include the role of feng shui in his selection of a site for his project, as well his explanation of the function of the Golden Section (or Divine Proportion, 1/1.618) in deciding the parameters of the rectangle for his floor plan.

Most of all, I appreciate Pollan’s delineation of the difference between the 20th century modernist or International Style approach to architecture, which abstractly stressed universality of form and consistent design elements regardless of a building’s context, with the architecture of someone like Frank Lloyd Wright, who focused on the connection between his buildings and their location within their chosen sites and his intentional employment of local materials. Pollan offers an insightful two-columned table to illustrate the difference between the two, with the first (stressing universality) labeled, “There,” and the second (stressing locality) labeled, “Here.”

All in all, he has given us a finely written book.

 

Roger Tory Peterson’s Art, Helping Us See

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If you wanted to buy a guide to help you identify birds, what would you choose? A book with glossy photographs showing birds as found in nature? Or would you choose an artist’s rendition of those same birds abstracted from their natural setting? Without considering the question closely, I suspect that I am not alone in being one who would choose the former for what seems an obvious reason, that photographs purport to capture reality in what we call an objective way. And when seeking to identify birds, correct apprehension of reality is what we are after. Paradoxically, Roger Tory Peterson’s, Field Guide to the Birds, first published in 1934, has long been valued precisely because his paintings and notes may aid accurate identification of birds to a greater degree than can be obtained by studying photographs.

As we also find in the presumed intent of more recent, photo-based, bird books, Peterson’s aim was to help us see, and then upon seeing, correctly identify the birds we have apprehended in our sights. Yet, Peterson, a much-regarded pioneer in the environmental movement, sought to aid our perception by prioritizing the various unique properties of individual species, and then to highlight those features that distinguish them from other birds. With the aid of his editors and book designers, he helped to achieve these goals by adding small black lines or dashes pointing to various parts of each bird on the color illustration pages displaying his paintings.

These small lines correspond to observation notes in the text, signaling to the reader the principal identification marks and points of difference between various similar-looking species of birds (see below). His creation of this method for the identification of observed field marks in birds has come to be called the Peterson Identification System.

A pre-publication page from Peterson’s Field Guide. Note the small black lines or dashes, explained above.

The paradoxical limitation that may accompany a photographic guide to birds is that a photograph captures an object in only one posture in one moment of time. Photographs are also dependent upon existing light conditions, and where the object of attention may also visually be obscured or overwhelmed by its larger context.

With paintings, Peterson may have been better able to help us see three dimensional aspects of the birds he portrayed while yet employing a two dimensional medium, in part because those birds are presented against a non-distracting neutral background. By painting rather than photographing, he was able to emphasize and enhance certain features of birds, such as subtle areas of color and the impact of light upon them, to a greater extent than would have been possible with the photographic means available to him at the time. In the process, Peterson demonstrated a consistently high degree of proficiency in his work of illustration, while also achieving what are arguably finished works of art that help us perceive beauty in the natural world around us.

The Finches page from my grandfather’s 1959 edition of Peterson’s Field Guide

 

Note: Having featured Peterson’s work, there are many newer bird identification books being published, and they are worth exploring when someone seeks a reliable birding guide. For many people of my generation, Peterson’s work will always be on the shelf, given its art rather than his having employed photo-based images, especially since his books are so widely available. I am proud to have and use my grandfather’s annotated copy (above), with his sightings noted on numerous pages going back to the 1960’s.

I am conscious of the fact that I featured multiple color photos of the Common Nighthawk in my prior post, as well as having offered a substantial amount of information about this particular species. If bird guides were to offer an equivalent kind and amount of coverage of every species commonly observed, they would be immense, and very expensive!

Roger Tory Peterson (1908-1996). It is one thing to be serious about one’s life work, and another to be able to laugh about it!

 

 

Encountered Beauty: Nighthawks in a Dark Sky

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I have clear memories of a particular time of day in a town where I lived for two short periods of time, Northfield, Minnesota. In middle school, and then during college, I would frequently walk over the Water Street bridge spanning the Cannon River, by the old dam and historic Malt-O-Meal mill. On summer evenings and nights, I remember almost always hearing the distinctive nasal or buzzing be-zeet, be-zeet sound of birds calling to one another in the sky above. When I first observed them, I wondered what kind of birds these were, and about their surprising nocturnal behavior as compared with other birds more familiar to me. Based on the white patches on the underside of their wings, visible from the reflected glow of the lights in the town center below, I was able to identify them as Common Nighthawks, based on Roger Tory Peterson’s well-known book, Field Guide to the Birds.

Seeming to fly far above me, I was curious about their size, imagining them to be rather large. I then learned that their size and weight puts them somewhere between a common robin and a crow, suggesting that they do not fly as high as I had first imagined. Nighthawks are insect-eaters, which accounts for why they are so evident on summer nights, amidst the target rich environment of flying bugs swarming over city lights.

With their long wings, these birds engage in bat-like flapping as well as in gliding, and I remember them flying closely together as they went about their nocturnal feeding. The American Bird Conservancy website describes them in this way: “the Common Nighthawk’s erratic, acrobatic flight style gives the bird its folk name, ‘bullbat’.” Memorable in this regard is the way that they make occasional dives toward the ground. Some observers report that these dives cause the wind under their wings to make a booming or a whooshing sound, though I don’t remember hearing it.

I was intrigued to learn that, given their relative size, these birds will roost and nest on such apparently vulnerable locations as the ground, elevated tree limbs, ledges, and even gravel rooftops. Among things I appreciate about Nighthawks is how their mottled coloring, with blends of light and dark feathers, has adapted them well to survive in a variety of environments, and helps to protect them from predators like hawks and falcons. Of course, there are those incongruous white wing patches, which may be an evolutionary bow to some needs parallel to survival, both the attraction of a mate and the procreation of offspring.

The shape and size of Nighthawks’ comparatively long wings aid not only their feeding activity while flying, but also the extraordinarily long annual migration they make between their breeding grounds in North America to their winter habitats in South America. In fact, they are believed to have one of the longest migration patterns of all North American birds.

To me, Nighthawks are an unexpected kind of bird to find in a town center or in a city, given their dimensions and surprising willingness to live and reproduce in proximity to the commercial activity we associate with such areas. I am always delighted when I recognize their sounds above me on a summer evening, as I look up to see them wheeling about in the darkness, with their white wing patches flashing here and there.

In the natural world around us, with all its dynamic interrelationships, these amazing birds are our fellow creatures. In relation to them, as well as to other examples of what traditionally have been termed flora and fauna, we are called to engage in God-like stewardship. We all seem to have our favorite species in nature that we want to protect and care for. Needless to say, Nighthawks are high on my list.

 

The Nighthawk page from my grandfather’s copy of Peterson’s Field Guide to the Birds

 

Geoffrey Jellicoe: Finding and Creating Beauty in the World

Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe at his London home shortly before his 90th birthday

 

Discerning beauty always presents an opportunity to experience joy. As many find, though, creating representations of beauty, as a chosen task, can be difficult.

Alive in my memory are images of areas of New York City and decaying areas of urban New England, during my high school years in the early 1970’s. I remember asking myself, as an aspiring architect and artist, how might I meet the challenge of creating examples of beauty in the world as we presently find it? Well, after some years, I discovered the life and work of Geoffrey Jellicoe, which provide an example of one way of answering questions that stay with me.

Late in his life, at a time when many seek the solace of retirement from actively pursuing such questions, Geoffrey Jellicoe took on a significant challenge. How might 150 acres of a seemingly forlorn stretch of a barrier island, adjacent to an urban area that has long surrendered to the declining effects of industrialization, be redeemed and transformed into a place for renewal by a humanistic vision of what might yet be?

Jellicoe, at the age of 80, and to the surprise of some, accepted the opportunity to submit a proposal for what might become the Moody Gardens. In the process, he embraced the idea of working with a hundred-plus acres of neglected sea marsh and dune land on Galveston Island. This site even included a need to take into account an existing but under-used local airport. Nevertheless, the esteemed landscape architect, Jellicoe, envisioned a large facility centered on the nurture of human flourishing by designing what he hoped would become a significant botanical garden. Its plan would be dedicated to re-creating documented historic human efforts to re-shape areas of the world through the practices of horticulture and landscape architecture.

The Texas-based Moody Foundation, a philanthropic organization committed to education, health, and community development, found in Jellicoe the person they believed was best equipped to provide a master plan for what might become Moody Gardens, in the vicinity of Houston. And he brought to this challenge a lifetime of learning and accomplished work, which fitted him well to address this auspicious opportunity.

Encountering Moody Gardens as it has come to be, a vibrant, attractive, and an apparently successful facility, we may be mislead about Jellicoe’s orginal concept for the project. In presenting itself now as a tourist destination with resort-like amenities, Jellicoe’s early proposals for the Gardens seem fanciful if not also highly visionary. Yet, there may be significant things we can learn from his initial plans, and the concepts he sought to embody in his hoped-for realization of the project.

I can suggest a few of these potential learnings by posing some rhetorical questions – questions that I hope to address in future posts.

  • What is ‘our human nature,’ that we hope or believe we all share? What environments are most suited for nurturing the flourishing of our human nature?
  • What is Nature, and what humanly-created environments are most true to Nature? What things or places do we consider to be ‘natural’?
  • Why does it require human effort, financial capital, and institutional resources to facilitate, maintain, and preserve ‘natural’ environments? (Consider here the scope of the funding for the National Park Service, and the United States Forest Service.)
  • And, why is concern about the natural world- the ‘environment’ – properly a matter for serious theological reflection, and one especially related to our regard for Beauty? Why do our concerns about the natural world have theological significance?

Geoffrey Jellicoe at work in his garden