Environmental Concern

Kengo Kuma’s Little Gem

The Japanese architect, Kengo Kuma, has designed a beautiful contemporary context for a display of traditional Japanese craftsmanship in woodworking. You can find it in a coffee shop at a Starbucks location in Fukuoaka, on Kyushu Island in southern Japan. Specifying the use of the art of Kiguma, the Japanese art of assembling pieces of wood through precise cuts and fittings, but employing no nails or screws, Kuma has created an aesthetically pleasing destination for those who appreciate fine architecture as well as espresso.

Kuma’s Fukuoka Starbucks coffee house, exterior view

Evident in many locations associated with its brand, Starbucks focuses upon providing thoughtfully designed contexts for enjoying their products, whether in self-standing stores or in airport and grocery store kiosks. In this particular case, the choice to engage the services of a design-savvy modern architect, and his willingness to undertake this comparatively small project, speak well to the sensitivities of both Kuma and the corporation.

Kuma’s plan for the interior of this space, complex in appearance, features what looks like a standard series of pieces of cherry wood that measure about six feet in length and of 2″ by 2″ dimensions. Employing these relatively light and small pieces of wood in a way that resembles modern tensile structures, the architect has produced an environment that hovers over and around customers, drawing them in to the interior. The spatial atmosphere he has attained is simultaneously conducive to imaginative reflection and yet also quiet contemplation. Perfect, in my mind, for enjoying a coffee break, while visiting the many historic attractions in this part of Japan.

Interior view

I am intrigued by what I have learned about Kengo Kuma’s design principles, articulated in his book, Anti-Object: The Dissolution and Disintegration of Architecture, positive ideas from his studies that he seeks to be exemplified in his own buildings and their spaces. His primary university eduction in Architecture was at Tokyo University, but he studied for a year at Columbia University, and has taught for short periods at two other American universities. Given his formation and his approach to design, I am inclined to think that he has found a sympathetic parallel to his world view in the lifelong architectural principles of Frank Lloyd Wright, who made seven trips to Japan and who lived there for three years while designing his Imperial Hotel for a location near the Imperial Palace in Tokyo.

A vintage postcard photo of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Tokyo Imperial Hotel, with its Japanese-inspired tile roofs, which survived the great 1923 Kanto earthquake

One observer has summed up Kuma’ approach in Anti-Object in this way: Kuma “critiques the Western architectural tradition of the isolated ‘object’ building, advocating instead for a more integrated, ‘weaker’ architecture that dissolves into its environment. Kuma argues against buildings that stand apart as self-centered monuments, proposing an alternative approach that uses natural light, materials, and context to create immersive, experiential spaces, drawing inspiration from Japanese traditions…”

Our American urban landscapes are filled with ‘object architecture’ of the kind with which Kuma has taken issue. Familiar examples might include the building style featured in the recent film, The Brutalist, and as is arguably represented by the new Presidential Center tower on the south side of downtown Chicago, which given its significant cost could have provided a beautiful addition to the city’s skyline. By contrast, Kuma contends for the goal of harmony with a building’s context, without either slavish imitation of neighboring buildings nor the opposite, a statement-seeking rejection of the style of surrounding structures and their physical environment.

Interior view, with a traditional Japanese structure and tiled roof in the background

A notable element of Kuma’s design for the interior structure of this coffee shop can be seen in the way that the wooden struts extend outward from their crossing points (visible in the photo above). Visitors to Japan might recognize how this feature of Kuma’s project echoes what are called chigi, the crossed roof ends of Shinto shrines, seen all over Japan. Note the affinity between the way that Kuma has employed the cherry wood components of his design, and the chigi as well as the extended wooden rods used in the following example of a traditional Japanese Shinto shrine:

Chigi, or crossed roof ends, as seen at a Shinto shrine in Japan

Having discovered the architectural work and ideas of Kengo Kuma, I look forward to learning more about his other buildings, among them the remarkable Victoria and Albert Museum in Dundee, Scotland, which I hope to feature in a future post.

Nikawa’s Voyage From Coast to Coast

William Least Heat-Moon (the pen name for William Lewis Trogdon, hereafter WLHM), continues to impress me with his nuanced vision of the United States. He consistently offers his readers a synthesis of well-crafted writing, an appreciation for the sometimes hidden beauty of the lands and waters he explores, and a sensitivity to features of our common humanity latent within the historical events attendant to the people and places he visits. I return from time to time to his book, River Horse: A Voyage Across America, a book I love for its clear-eyed record of his water-based journey across this country. On a 26’ C-Dory motor cruiser, and accompanied by several friends whose roles are represented by symbolic monickers (e.g., Pilotis, and ‘the Photographer’), he traces a voyage from the mouth of New York Harbor to that of the Columbia River in Oregon. Readers familiar with geography but new to this book will wonder how WLHM managed to cross the Continental Divide in the C-Dory, and will discover that the author and his friends’ passage was facilitated by a vehicle trailer around some portage points, and by a canoe through and over the western mountains at their highest points.

Nikawa on her trailer, with the handy canoe secured above the pilothouse

WLHM periodically uses unfamiliar vocabulary in a way that may strike some readers as pretentious, but which I generally find apt and instructive. Clearly, he savors words as much as the sights he seeks to capture through his writing. His evident identification with the sentiments expressed in quotations from earlier journals and public documents, and the care with which he treats them regarding the places he visits, tells us a lot about the author.

This is the kind of book that boaters who have a yen for nautical adventure will love. As I do for his other published work, I have a high regard for what WLHM has accomplished with this travel narrative. He has filled it with insight concerning not only geographical terrain, but also with pertinent observations about the people he meets, who interact with or are sometimes indifferent to the beauty he encounters along his passage. As an able and informed observer, the author communicates much about what he sees as well as about its potential significance for others who might come along after him. His book is shaped by his dialogue with the recorded experience of those who have traversed the same waterways and their surroundings before him, as well as by contemporaries familiar with the same areas. By this means, WLHM draws readers in to his own reflective experience. He invites us ‘to look over his shoulder’ and then journey with him through the captivating but also sometimes less than encouraging features of where he goes. To this point, in his expressed appreciation for numerous rivers negotiated by Nikawa, he does not overlook reporting on the accumulated plastic debris that by the mid 1990’s had already collected in certain pockets of at least one river. He then offers brief but also judicious comments with respect to potential remedies for public attitudes about the waters that border our towns and rural lands.

The author and his boat, observed during his voyage (evidently from a newspaper photo)

Aside from his absorbing description of the commencement of his voyage, which effectively draws the reader into his narrative, several passages in the book linger in my memory. I think of his account of Nikawa’s passage down the relatively gentle Ohio River, which is often calm due to the series of locks and dams. His reflections about the river evoked thoughts of a possible retracing of his pathway through those waters, especially given their occasionally curious personal and historical associations (as in the following vignette). 

In this part of his text, WLHM offers a brief account of an Irishman who was persuaded by Aaron Burr to join a nascent conspiracy to found a new and independent political domain lower down the Ohio and by the Mississippi, a venture later halted by authorities sent under the direction of Thomas Jefferson. This provides a good example of the numerous occasions about which WLHM interweaves observant travelogue with his study of past events. Interspersed within this same portion of the narrative focused on the area around Marietta, the author reports humorous offhand comments gleaned at a diner. After his conversation with a local woman, a beautician named “Enna-mel,” she leaves him with a parting remark that adds spice to the story. 

The author in what may be his second favorite place to be, an historical archives room

Shaping words about the work of an accomplished writer can be hazardous, though I am encouraged by WLHM’s quotation of a portion of William Clark’s Journal from the great 1804-6 expedition to the West. Clark’s struggle to portray the then sublime splendor of the untamed Great Falls of the Missouri River clearly were significant to WLHM. This is evident in the latter writer’s implied recognition of the challenge posed by his own desire to communicate the fullness of his experience of the same waters. 

River Horse is sprinkled with anecdotes from earlier times, along with perceptive observations from William Least Heat-Moon’s journey notes. He well-describes the many rivers through which Nikawa made her way, and almost every page of this book offers detailed insights that will reward an attentive reader, especially those who muse – as I have – about undertaking a similar adventure. 

Walter Inglis Anderson and the Experience of Loving What God Loves
A beach on Horn Island, Mississippi Gulf Coast

We are created in God’s image and likeness. We often assume that this is reflected in the way that we think, in our capacity for reason and in our desire for wisdom. But we also reflect our creation in God’s image and likeness in our desire to love. We all want to love, and receive love. Sometimes, especially in this fallen world, we love in ways that are disordered. We love the right things in the wrong way, and we love the wrong things in what we deceive ourselves into thinking may be a good or right way.

And yet, we still love, whether it is ourselves that we love to the point of it being at the expense of loving others and the world around us, or it may be that we love others and the world at the expense of rightly loving ourselves.

The Holy Scriptures remind us that God is love. And that God first loved us before we knew it. And that God so loved the world that he gifted himself in the form of the Word made flesh, who came among us, full of the grace and truth that he has so generously shared with us. “I am who I am” (what God spoke to Moses from the burning bush) becomes the source of “we are who we are,” especially when we become aware of and live into the fullness of who we really are.

And so, to love what God loves is to share in the experience of God’s love. Awareness of this leads us to become more aware of the way we are called to share in God’s own way of loving. To do so actually comes to us naturally, even though we in our fallen state are impaired in our ability fully to live into this reality, and believe we are capable of it.

In my prior post, I reflected on how some of this capacity to love what God loves may be revealed in the life and work of Walter Inglis Anderson, who himself may not have been aware of the fact, nor may have had the conscious ability to believe it. In this respect, Anderson, followed in the spiritual footsteps of John Muir, whose earlier example may help us appreciate this dimension of the Mississippi painter’s relationship with nature. For Muir, through his childhood formation in orthodox Reformed Christian beliefs, came to believe he was loving Creation as God loves it, however much Muir’s vision expanded and broadened over the years so as to appear that he had moved beyond the bounds of traditional faith.

The painter and solitary, Walter Inglis Anderson, portraying himself rowing out to Horn Island

To experience joy when we encounter and perceive the beauty we find in the world – even in ourselves – is to experience God’s love for the world. Beauty in the world is a manifestation of God’s self-giving, and of a love that is self-giving, even to the point where we are capable of bringing harm to it or rejecting it. The same is true for God’s love for us, and for those with whom we have been given the opportunity for fellowship and community. For God’s love is not for us solely, as individuals, but is present in fellowship and in community, especially in communities founded upon this great gift of divine love.

Anderson’s son, John, retracing some of his father’s footsteps

Here, we can come to appreciate another insight we can gain from learning about Walter Inglis Anderson. Like the earlier Muir, Anderson came to perceive – or perhaps always intuitively knew – that to see, to really see what is in and around us, is enabled by ‘getting out of the way.’ When I, as one who sees, am conscious and then distracted by my awareness of my process of seeing and perceiving, I become absorbed with my own subjectivity, at the expense of more fully becoming focused upon the objects of my perception. In seeking to love you, or things in the world around us, my focus upon my process of loving or seeking to love impedes my actual participation in really loving you, you who are a fellow subject of loving and not simply an object of my love.

A Horn Island painting by Walter Inglis Anderson

I think that Anderson was enabled to arrive at such an awareness by enacting his desire to be among and really see the plants, birds, animals, the seashore, and the changing weather conditions, while on his solitary sojourns to Horn Island. Therein lies the paradox. God’s love for the divine beauty reflected in the world that he has made was at the heart of Anderson’s love for the beauty that we find in nature. And in sharing in that same love of beauty, he came to perceive how he was actually not alone, even in his periodic states of hermitage under the shelter of his upturned dinghy.

Awareness of this is one doorway into perceiving and then enjoying what Jesus spoke of when he said, “Wherever two or three of you are gathered, I am there.” The great “I am” is with us, now to behold and embrace, Spirit in Flesh, Word made human, not only in ourselves and in the things around us, but also between us at the heart of our fellowship.

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.