Home / Studio: Sky Valley, CA
The home/studio is located in Sky Valley, CA, a rural community about 25 minutes from downtown Palm Springs. It is a gently rolling desert landscape south of the Joshua Tree National Park and north of the San Andreas fault zone. The natural vegetation is mainly creosote bushes with occasional varieties of cactus. Mesquite, palo verde, aloe vera, washingtonia palms, tamarisk and other desert tolerant plants have been introduced to the area as it has become settled.
I began work on the 5-acre parcel in 2006 immediately after I bought it. It took 3 months to clear the property of years of accumulated debris. A complete reconstruction of the existing house followed and took about 15 months and the construction of out buildings including storage, studio, tool room and walls took an additional 9 months. By late 2008 I had completed getting my new living and work space set up and restarted my sculpting.
From the beginning of my relationship with the Sky Valley property I 've always thought it to be a unique and inspiring place to be, even in its windy moments. As I've worked on the property, I've formed a vision of what I think it could become. I envision a winding drive up the hill to the main complex with large sculptures, moving in the wind, placed at different locations along the route of travel. In early 2009 I completed the first installation of what I hope will become a series of large-scale kinetic works, "Shimmer Tree". With my interest in being environmentally conscious I've discovered such wonders as soilcrete--using the local ground material as the primary medium for concrete thereby reducing paving costs to a fraction of that of poured concrete.
I've also thought that this could be a wonderful place for other artists to come and develop their talents and I've envisioned a series of live/work spaces where artists are provided resources to develop their particular talent. For some Artists the workspace would be a private studio as part of the living area. For others, it would be shared studios such as woodshop, metalshop, photolab, etc.
I also envision that the live/work spaces and other common shared facilities could be a demostration of how to use sound design practices (controling sun penetration, wind buffering, colors, use of sun & shadow surfaces, ground insulation, etc.) and create good design. Environmentally conscious design coupled with the full utilization of abundant energy resources including wind, solar, geothermal and gravity could show the potential of environmental consciousness.
In recent months, working with other artists and indivuduals, a concept has emerged for creating a nonprofit corporation that would provide a vehicle for visual artists who are survivors of traumatic life-alterning events to develop and launch their careers as professional artists and self-sustaining human beings. The proposed name is "Creare" which is latin for "to create". Click here to see the mission statement, goals and operation of this proposed nonprofit corporation.
