"In the end, we shall have had enough of cynicism, scepticism and humbug, and will want to live - more musically." This quote (Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo), came to me from a friend, just before Christmas, 2012, as I was finishing this gift book about how to make a gorgeous-sounding 3-stringed instrument from scrap wood and cardboard. Details and story in the book, so more people can make their own music with their own neighbors. There's an onscreen (pdf) version below, and a youtube video of Ray and Shirley playing for you. A $10, (full color!) paper version is also available from . . .
Hug Hut at Muddy Creek School, Philomath
Muddy Creek charter school in Philomath commissioned this mud project as the initial step in creating an "outdoor classroom." All 60 kids, K-5, participated in 2 days of playdough brainstorming and design, and six days of mud. Parents and neighbors contributed random prunings of willow, fruitwood, and forsythia that we wove into a rough hut; the mud came up out of a hole in the ground, and we ended up making a lovely cob bench and this "hug hut." The hut was designed to "last" for just one winter, and then get torn down so new students could make their own -- instead of taking care of . . .
Mud Mural at Colorado State University Pueblo, with Kiko Denzer
Maya Aviña teaches fine arts at CSU in Pueblo, Colorado. For about the past ten years, she’s been immersed in natural building, which she has also made into the focus of her research at the college. Last year, she invited me to come be an “artist in residence†and do a mural project. The challenge was to bring life into dead space: a bleak, harsh, hard-edged, institutional (college) courtyard of grey and yellow concrete pressed down by massive, overhanging soffit walls of more cast concrete. It looked (and felt) like a pen in a zoo designed so the animals below couldn’t . . .