Connecting the dots

I slept outdoors last night in the dry stone Gothic arch greenhouse we built  in Gualala California. The air was crisp and cold. The night sky was filled with tiny dots of light. I lay on my back on the cobbled stone floor, staring up waiting for the light show to begin. Nothing. The stars were many but there was no show. No comets. No satellites. No northern lights. Just small specs of light peering back at me in the darkness and profound faraway stillness.

Slowly my eyes began to connect the dots. The brighter stars seemed to reach out and magnetically connect to other stars, creating a cellular patten of imaginary shapes. The night sky very slowly revealed a fascinating web of connectedness. It was as though I was being allowed to detect a purpose and direction to their placement. 


I began to think of our place and purpose on this tiny planet. We are here to connect the dots. Our purpose is to put our ducks in a row- to line up the details, the occurrences, the ideas, the notes, the words and the stones, all in rows.

I saw an imaginary dry stone wall gradually come into focus. 

Such are the marvelous thoughts and wonderful musings that come with spending a night surrounded by dry stone walls . There is a sense of place that comes in a stone enclosure that keeps you connected and makes you feel you are not alone.   

Derivatives

I wrote to an artist I had discovered on the internet who was doing some interesting digital images, (not unlike this photo above, which for the purposes of this post, is not his) It inspired me to do something similar in dry stone. I wrote him requesting that we might collaborate or at least wondered if he would be agreeable to me developing the theme of his photos further, only in some sort of dry stone application. 


He kindly wrote me back and gave me permission to publish his photos on my blog but said  he wasn't able to collaborate on a project because he had moved on to some different photographic concepts and he didn't have the time  for anything else. Moreover, I was disappointed to read that his work was "published with a "non derivative" Creative Common License" and that therefore I could not use the idea he had come up with even as a bit of a springboard for something 'derived' from his photos . 


It seemed to me that this spelled the end of the creative process for this concept, in terms of where he (or anyone else) was going, unless he decided to pursue it on his own. I do wonder about this sort of thing. While I understand the idea/need of preserving a certain ownership of one's artistic ideas and content, I think there can be unfortunate consequences when it hinders people from developing upon a specific theme just because the person who 'discovered' it  is not only unwilling to allow others to use but not interested in pursuing it any further themselves.


I have given consent on occasion to people using original ideas I've come up with, like the hot wheels loop I did several years ago. It seemed to be a win win situation. 

An idea I came up with and rendered in photoshop for a client.

The finished product.

Sometimes they don't ask me and just use a design or an original idea created in dry stone, just taking credit for it as their own. That's not so nice, but it's still a risk you take when you 'give birth' to an idea. It's okay to be imitated and even not be given the credit  but it is a bit annoying to see people promoting your idea as their own, and in fact merely butchering your creative concept because of how badly they do it.


Is there an answer to being copied badly and should we have the right to 'sit' on our creations?

Sardinian Stonework

Instant Arch

A little arch we built on a street in Deià in Mallorca after a heavy steamy rainfall.
I decided to post this video clip from 2006 here today. I thought the flowers would be appropriate for Valentine's.

Shore Thoughts

The sandstone surfaces along this rocky shore near Point Arena are like finely executed watercolours. The stones with their complex patina of colours and shading convey a sense of skill and artistry. They are dappled in sunlight and tinted with the fading hues of evaporation from the receding tide. The textures are eaten away by time and weather. The patterned contours speak of a time when the rocks were free as clouds as they floated in the primordial firmament. They remember in their peeling flesh the far away land forms they have once been part of and new landscapes they will merge into again. Theirs is a reality and purpose waiting to be uncovered in layers. The rocky ocean shoreline is a place to renew ones love of stone and feel small again, small enough to explore between the contours of an imagination bigger than our own.

Fractal Gathering

http://www.novastructura.net/show_work.php?name=Stone-Fields

The mathematical generation of natural looking textures, planes and surfaces using fractal geometry creates some very pleasing effects . There is something happening on a similar plane with the introduction of creative dry stone elements into the natural landscape. Exploring the intrinsic patterning of the universe has become an area where the distinctions between detailed computer generated images, the natural order and artistically laid stonework are becoming delightfully blurred.

Baker's fieldguide to oven building. Part 4

We set up an elaborate temporary arrangement of boards in order to accurately establish the points of the peaks at the gables.

Then we ran string lines from the corners of the wall to the peaks to establish the diagonal line of the parapets and then began to lay stone up to these lines.

Plates were mortared into place along the top of both side walls.

After that a 70 inch ridge board was screwed temporarily in place (hung from our temporary frame above the structure). Then we measured and cut the rafters. 

Sheathing (with reflective foil on lower side) was screwed on to the rafters.

 The inside of the oven looked pretty sweet.

We took this night photo two days before the oven was roofed . 

We got impatient and tried cooking a pizza on the small fire we built in the oven that night. Not a good idea. 

Here's a rather fuzzy shot of the finished oven after it was roofed with cement roofing tiles and the site was cleaned up.

Looking back at our original design, we were pretty happy with how close it looked, even with the changes that we felt we needed to make with our time constraints.

It took us 7 days to build.

Baker's fieldguide to oven building. Part 3

The second brick arch is completed. The arch is slightly higher than the one in front of the flue to allow smoke to turn up into the chimney.

The smoke will be forced downwards and out of the oven vault through a narrower 21 inch firebrick arch

The flue is directed forward using firebricks to go up and over the stone arch and so allow the chimney to fir within the narrow parapet width of only 18 inches wide.

The vault is covered with refractory cement. Two thermometers have been installed in two bricks which have been pre-drilled to accommodate the probes in the vault .

Perlite is mixed with Portland and sand to create a 'churffy' concrete mix that has a high insulation value

The Perlite concrete is applied to the outer surface of the oven vault.

A second layer of perlite concrete is applied

Three layers of ceramic refractory fibreglass blankets are laid over the vault to retain the heat even more and to create a thermal break with the rest of the masonry.

Baker's fieldguide to oven building. Part 2

Next came the hearth stone.We used a reclaimed curb stone from San Francisco. These huge granite chunks were original quarried and chiseled square by Chinese workers in the mid 1800's

The hearth stone is laid on the stonework along the front of the oven and positioned so that it is exactly the right height for firebricks laid on the concrete base to butt up flush. The hearth also has to be overhanging. The eight inch blocks take the unbalanced weight until more stone is added above the hearth.

The herringbone pattern is laid right up flush to the large hearth stone.

The channel for the opening and the throat is ruffed out.

The first firebrick arch is laid. This is built behind, and becomes part of the stone door archway which is built immediately after . The brick arch will eventually not be seen.

We use a small form for two brick archways and the front stone arch opening

The sides to the bake oven are built up and then work begins on the six courses of vaulting. This requires another larger form, able to support one course at a time. A second stone arch is added in front of the first. This arch is larger and allows head space and more storage space on the hearth.

Baker's fieldguide to oven building. Part 1

The first step was to dig a proper foundation.

Concrete footings and 8 inch blocks are laid up to form the base.

There needs to be plenty of ledge room to lay stones around the block structure. 

Meanwhile work is done figuring out the span dimensions and angles for the opening.

The vault of the bake oven chamber needs to be 17 bricks across and 5 bricks deep.

Every firebrick is then cut at the proper angle.

Three inches of concrete is poured inside a wooden frame on a prepared base of plywood and rebar.

The herring bone hearth is then laid with refractory cement on the cured concrete platform .

The joints are tight and the surface perfectly level.

The stonework is starting to be laid.

The joints are recessed to give a dry laid look. 

Ready aim fire.

Photos of people taking photos always seem to attract interest. Even if the subject matter is dull it draws you in because the fact that someone is photographing it makes you wonder if there's something you're missing.  I didn't know my photo was being taken as I stooped down to get a close-up of the first fire in our new bake oven we just built in California. It did seem pretty special. It worked well (the smoke rose up the chimney effortlessly, none of it came out the door) and the proportions all worked well visually. The first burn in it was very exciting. So in a way this could have  been a photo which didn't need to include me in it taking a photo of it.

Bake oven designing

Thinking with my hands sometimes starts with a drawing.  Sometimes it starts with a design on paper or even a napkin, but in the case of this bake oven project we were asked to design the ideas flowed from experimenting doing a drawing first on sketchup. 

Heritage masonry professor John Scott and I worked out some of the details based on our collective experience working on well proportioned stone buildings and knowing that bake ovens can and should look beautiful too. They don't have to look as utilitarian as they often do. Our aim was not to just build a good working oven but to wow people too when they see it. 

Here is the design we came up with. We decided to give it the proportions of a small house and have two parapets, one of which the bake oven chimney was housed. 

We have already changed a few things from this original design as we have had the opportunity to work out some of the design as we build. I'm hoping it will make an interesting post later this week to compare the finished structure to this drawing. 

Cracked dry hands

Been working with cement all this week doing mortared stonework . We are building a bake oven. We are using cement because we don't want there to be holes between the stones and we want the bricks to stick. It is the lime in the mix that makes is very causticky too. It's making my hands and skin very dry. Puts new meaning to being a 'dry' stone waller. 

When i look at my hands I see lots of tiny cracks. They kind of make an interesting pattern. When I magnify them thousands of times there appears to be millions of tiny little hands in a complex never ending fractal pattern. If I look closer, all those tiny hands are dry and cracked too.

Wild Rock Wine Shelf

Abbey Road

The cobbled pitching of the greenhouse floor looks best when it is viewed from high atop the cherry picker.

Waiting to happen.

I am thankful to have had the opportunity to work with some great people last week completing this dry stone wall structure.  The Gothic arch pyramid greenhouse was a design I had come up with a long time before it ever was realized. Our client saw it last year and gave us a wonderful opportunity to build it and provided a beautiful space to build it in. 
It is not often one gets to create something so iconic. 
Not appearing to be reminiscent of anyone else's work or at all derivative of any other specific structure, this unique dual-gabled folly with its diagonally laid stonework looks so convincingly 'right' that it gives the impression of being 'inevitable'. I can't help but think it was merely waiting to be revealed. Thanks to Sean Adcock, Dave Claman, Sean Smyth, Akira Inman and Evan Oxland for helping make it happen.

Then the rain came.

Immediately after we completed the second wall of the dry stone greenhouse near Mendocino Ca. the rain came.

We put an 18 foot 2 x 8 board across the peeks and draped a 60' by 20' clear plastic tarp over our work space to stay dry, and began pitching the floor with a mixed pallet of tumbled bricks, granite columns, flag stones and red sandstone sticks. 

Our design was based on dividing the floor into four sections and maintaining a symmetry with our materials and out cobbling pattern. The end result was visually stunning which totally surprised us.  Pictures of the finished walls and floor will be posted here tomorrow.