AURORA

a recent drawing

I've been inspired on these rainy winter days to do some drawing. Here a recent one in pen and ink of the rocky California coastline...

Healing Mountain, Mount Tam

Tamalpais.

Mt. Tamalpais is the name of a 2,571 foot high mountain that sits on the California Pacific Coast just north of the Golden Gate. The name Tamalpais was given to this coastal mountain by early Spanish settlers who joined the native Miwok Indian word tamal, meaning coast or bay with the word pais meaning mountain. Mt. Tamalpais lies within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the world's largest urban park with 74,000 acres spanning the counties of Marin, San Francisco, and San Mateo.

This mountain is very healing for me, and for the residents who live in and around it. I have been photographing this mountain lately, when I happen to catch it in interesting light. It is always changing, always dis-appearing and re-appearing. Fog, clouds, evening light, dusk light,...all these elements change and shift the character of this beautiful mountain on a daily basis.

Below are some of my pics of this Sacred Mountain:

Polynesian Healing Pole

Last time I visited the Presidio, I went to the Chapel to see the Gothic Revival windows there. Unfortunately, it was closed. But what I did get to see lay outside the chapel on blocks, The "KOHOLA" Polynesian Healing pole, created by Shane Eagleton.

"The pole weighs over 3 tons and was carved in the Presidio from a 1200 year old Alaskan red cedar, salvaged from the War effort by a philanthropist. The pole is being exhibited there until its move to a permanent home at the Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii. a gift from the first Peoples of California to the first Peoples of the Pacific Islands.

The log is one of 10 logs felled in Alaska in the early 1020's and brought by rail to SF to be used as underwater caissons at Port Chicago, a US Naval base in the East Bay. They served for 20 years, and in 1944 withstood the tragic blast that killed 350 men when an ammunition ship exploded as it was being loaded for the war in the Pacific. Fifty years longer they served underwater and for three years they dried on land. They were salvaged in 1997 by Jon Larson for the KOHOLA Project.

KOHOLA - "Seek the Light"

Early Hawaiians observed the mother whales gently pushing their newborn calves toward the surface (the light) for their first breath. Kohola literally translates to "seek the light"...
This is the first and largest healing pole in the project and has the head of a humpback whale at the top.
Their is a carved baby whale, exhibited in the chapel, which will be attached at the top of the pole when it is installed.

The Artist, Shane Eagleton is the son of a British royal Air Force officer, and his Fijjian bride. They moved from Fijji to New Zealand when shane was 6. With canoe carving deep in his heritage, shane was given a penknife by his grandmother when he was 8, and he bagan a life-long love of carving wood.

As a young man he saw the world- Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and finally America where he learned the art of tree surgury and discovered a larger more effective tool for carving wood- the chainsaw. Using a variety of chain saws, grinders, and chisels he carves environmentally-conscious themes froma any discarded wood.

"I use recycled wood to make statements for the environment" To Shane, " recycling trees into art instead of consigning them to a landfill or a buzzsaw, giving them a second life of dignity, is symbolic of treating the whole planet and its endangered lifeforms with more care and respect."

Shane teaches at the California State University in Monterey, and is establishing a wood carving institute at Windward college at the University of Hawaii. He has carved healing poles around the world. In Czechoslovakia, he carved healing poles from still-standing trees destroyed by acid rain. His work can be seen locally at the Shoreline amphitheater, Strybing Arboretum, San Francisco Zoo, and at the Native Plant Nursury in the Presidio.

Albinus Elskus (1926 - FEB. 2007)

Sad to report the passing of one of the great lights of the Craft of Stained Glass, Albinus Elskus.

Over his lifetime he created, designed and painted hundreds of windows, and was an influential teacher, as well as writing one of the definitive tomes on the Art of Painting on Glass.

I never met the man, but he was always spoken of with the greatest of respect, and every studio I ever visited had his volume on the shelf.

Rest In Peace, Professore...

Maybeck's Masterpiece in Berkeley, CA

I had the chance to visit Berkeley the last weekend. We hiked for a bit in Tilden Park, but mainly I went to see the amazing building of the First Church of Christ, Scientist.

The First Church of Christ, Scientist is the only building in Berkeley that has been designated a National Landmark. It is the highest honor that can be given a structure or site in the United States. The church, located on the northeast corner of Dwight Way and Bowditch Street, was designed by Bernard Maybeck in 1910, and is widely regarded as his masterpiece.

Maybeck was born in New York in 1862. In 1882 he traveled to Paris where he studied architecture at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. His studies exposed him to design theories which combined architectural styles of the past with the technological advancements of the age.
Maybeck built on these design principles and developed an eclectic vocabulary of forms and materials.
This is most beautifully expressed in First Church of Christ Scientist, Berkeley.

It was closed, unfortunately, during my visit. It is also undergoing some exterior renovation, so I was unable to see the rich, ornate interior.
My desire is to return in the Spring, when the wisteria vines are in full, fragrant bloom, and the trees are in full leaf. Even though this is California, its still February. So the winter is still in effect, and the days are still a bit grey.

What I absolutely love about this building is its seamless and creative blend of Gothic and Japanese, with touches of Romanesque and Byzantine as well. I have always been fascinated by Asian architecture, Japanese in particular. I love the horizontality, the use of screens and porches, overhangs and use of natural materials in Japanese architecture. Buildings sympathetic with the horizon, harmonizing with the landscape...

Likewise, (being from the Gothic city of Boston), I have a natural love for the high soaring Gothic arches, plaintively stretching towards the sky and God. The use of high vertical expanse, ever reaching,...the varied use of colored and sculpted stones stacked on one another. It was Gothic that gave rise to the vast expanses of stained glass and its development.

I never thought that it would ever be possible to marry the East and the West in the form of a building. Coming from the east coast, from a city filled with old European style buildings and churches, and now living and landing on the west coast, I often lamented that it seemed impossible for me to find an example of fusing Gothic and Western Craftsman/Japanese style. It seemed like an impossible blending. How could you get a sense of verticality AND horizontality into the same building? This begged other questions to me: How could an artist blend both the Natural and Designed, Organic and Structured, Spiritual and Material...?

But here in Berkeley, just under 100 years ago, Mr. Maybeck did just that.

This building has the stone Gothic tracery of the European churches of old, yet they are filled with textured white glass in simple diamond form, and the tracery is set under the eves of giant wooden Japanese-style overhanging roofs. The building has what amounts to rows of 'Flying Buttresses', yet these are made of wood trellises, upon which twisted vines of wisteria creep up and through and around. The low walls are solid, held by columns with carved capitals in the medieval European style, yet the figures are smooth and rounded, and the columns themselves are square, and made of cast concrete, topped off with more wooden trellises. There is a unique appreciation for Nature which I am captivated by..., and a respect for plants as a co-creator of space,... for Maybeck saw to it that a giant California Oak tree spreads its twisting meandering trunks out and over the front portals, and twisting wisteria vines crawl around the perimeters awaiting Spring blossoms.

Glass is all around the church, on all walls, yet they are long rectangles of hammered clear glass leaded in a grid, rows of 'Shoji Screens' of glass instead of rice paper. It is also topped off with a terracotta roof, made of rounded clay shingles, which are prevelant in most California Craftsman style architecture round the Bay Area.

It truly is one of the most seamless meldings of styles I've come across, and its hybrid personality is both inspiring and absolutely unique.