She lives 3,900 miles from here on a different continent, but Helen Nock’s inspired craftsmanship just about ripped my heart out. I have rarely had such an avid appreciation of someone’s excellent work – and make no mistake, there sure are plenty of folks who do amazing things – but Helen’s work had me from the get-go.
The two bird baths – above and below - give an idea of her material and her general concepts. She – like me – loves mosaics and the crazy imaginings one can get from colored glass. Yes, it’s a weakness, I admit it. I thought the Indians got a great deal selling Manhatten for $22 worth of glass baubles, myself. I’da been cheaper! I am moved by the baubles made by the human hand. Just as the stained glass in the great churches moved men and women to forget their meager and hard-fought existences, witnessing God’s glory and the promise of better lives in those Holy Places – be they Mosque or Temple or the Great Cathedrals of Europe – now, from the hands of fabulous craftsmen and women such as Helen Nock, we get yet another near-religious experience. We are now enabled to witness a shameless exposure to radical artistic design – equally powerful in many ways and definitely as mesmerizing. Helen – like the architects of those inspirational devices of churches – also loves experimenting with her own version of killer baubles, enjoying the dimensional frames they fool us with and beguile us with so dearly – and with a playful sense of love at the same time. Art with a smile never looked so good.
So? It’s A Garden Fer Pete Sakes!! Get Real!
Sue me! What could be cooler? I’m just a gardener!!
These handcrafted products bring ferocious and gorgeous new colors into a garden, all season long – no matter the season. Plus, Helen has a hysterical take on symmetry going for her too – balance is structural, by all means, but hardly designed that way above her very substantial steel footings. I find much of her work positively “Antonio Gaudi-like” and love it. In those times of the year when color is so desperately desired, we have this incredible artifact – or many others shown below by way of tables, seats, bird baths or just standard ornamentation – all glitzy, translucent, shimmering and special and all our own. Man, am I ever a fan!
Here’s a close up of the picture above – and, yes, please ask about materials…………
This isn’t some small time girl.This is a serious pursuit and we gain from these gorgeous artworks.
I have no problem whatsoever in comparing what she does with the great artisans of our – or any – era. Art is a trick – we take standard average elements and make them something far, far more than they began with. At my most presumptuous, I think that about my best work. Helen Nock, as many others of us, works hard at her chosen craft. Her products are often commissioned by individuals with very particular wants. Take this Sunflower Table for example:
A stunning fact of her work is not just in its artistic sensibility alone, either. These items are not your everyday flimsy, department store items. They are made with the connivance and aid from her local blacksmith, as Helen’s demands go to such materials as Stainless Steel, bronze, copper and the slates and stone sets which need a firm footing, attached for super permanence. These are, after all, outdoor products for the most part. They need to accomplish sturdiness and stability facing the greatest conniving for failure devised by man or Diety – children, for one thing, rain and wind and the elements in general, for others – including freezing and thawing. Outside of the Sun, Nature’s most universal killer of man made things is the alternating temperature during a day’s passage.
Her “smithy”, Nathan Bennett, is a busy man, and thorough. Not only do they conspire to build these edifices extremely well, they build them to last. And not only do they build them to last, but Helen does these series’ of acid washes of the metals themselves, bringing colors out with each application, fastidiously producing her desired product. She works until she gets it right. I think I like this aspect best, but then I would. The thrill of producing permanent things is a wonderful accomplishment.
Here are her own words as to how she arrived at this craft: (from her website profile)
“I was formally trained in fine art and design with a special interest in painting but a series of unnexpected turns led to my current practice. My professional carreer began working with teenagers and young adults disaffected by mainstream education shortly after gaining my B A Hons as a mature student. A fantastic six years of lecturing and teaching both professionally and personally stretching, but by September 2006, I felt the need to focus my own practice.
I assumed a return to painting on a full-time basis but working in a disused stone quarry surrounded by wildlife, some training on the resident blacksmith’s forge and a strong interest in nature and natural materials strongly influenced my decision to make beautiful and unusual things that live outside. The metal working opportunity led to developing work where I could integrate wrought iron, and commission the blacksmith to manufacture from my designs. Exploring mosaic method seemed a natural progression to combine with wrought iron furniture. Latterly, I explored the potential of mosaic method for individual sculptural work. I will use a range of methods and material as work and inspiration suggest, not all exclusively mosaic but my abiding interest in mosaic method is fired by it’s flexibility and hardy utility, and diverse possibilities it offers in combinations of media and technique.”
Works for me!!
Here is Helen herself, decked out in her most decadent and oh-so-fashionable working attire and doing those lady-like things we all expect our wimmins to do. Yes, she is grinding away with a Super Industrial strength grinder. Oh still my heart!!! That grinder, by the way, is like what we use for shaving cement blocks and bricks. It is about as safe as a loaded gun and needs that much care to avoid accidental disaster – they are, in fact, so powerful, they can also ruin some work in a split second, too.
(She’ll kill me for this, I am sure, lol) Hey. I’m in love, don’t listen to those other guys!
What we get, from the developer of this art’s perspective, is this – the elemental series of constructions I found incredibly fascinating, to say nothing of the end product:
This is where she exhibits just some of her stuff. A word – she also does sculpture and she also does – get this – lighting for gardens, which I show here. This one is entitled “Wall Urchin”:
Here it is, lit up:
Helen Nock. My current most favorite artist in the world and also a great gal, I hasten to add. I’ve only spoken with her by mail, asking her permission to spread the Great Word and we definitely made one another laugh.
There can be no higher praise.
Thanks, Helen and keep it up!!
She does a great Pig, by the way!! And in a shirt, no less, for the more modest of us.
I’m doing this post to please a friend who asked about what all the hubub was over Burning Man. She had never heard of it. Since I’ve been there, I have my own very personal opinion. So, Marcia – here ya go. The event is this coming week.
I guess I’m stretching a bit to present what to many is a scandalously misunderstood event in here in my nice conservative, construction and design-related blog, but I feel somehow almost obligated to. I enjoy sharing my life in every way and I obviously appreciate products I consider items of artistic genius.
Please understand, My interest in this popular and controversial event stems from these underpinnings. There are many sayings and diatribes on how we contaminate reality with belief. I guess that pretty much says it all.
(click any image to enlarge)
Burning Man is a week-long event of something more than epic proportions, held on the same “playa” or lake bed where the world land speed record was set a few years ago by the crazed Englishman piloting a virtual jet car at above the speed of sound. Gerlach, Nevada is about 60 miles Northest of Reno and it is an otherwise sleepy, oppressively hot burg of a scattered population of every political persuasion known to man. But the world class events which happen out its front windows are some crazy stuff.
What began in 1986 with a few guys hoisting up an 8′ high wooden “Man” and then setting the sucker on fire on Baker Beach in San Fransisco, has now evolved into something of a virtual culture. This year, 48,000 people will congregate in the Black Rock Desert to participate in this year’s version of Burning Man – a festival like absolutely no other. Here, from the Burning Man’s own website is the timeline and history of the event.
You can see some strange stuff out there!
Nature gets gorgeous and pretty crazy during a stay in the desert like this. One sure needs good shades, some serious sun screen and a ton of water. Dust storms are normal, not rare – it seems every year is good for a nasty, good sized dust storm: Here comes one now!
But Nature also gives………..
It may surprise people to realize that the average age of a Burning Man attendee is around 35. After a walk around, through all the amazingly well-organized streets of campers, sporting silliness and wonder, it becomes more obvious.
Burning Man is a “barter zone” – money is only allowed for use at the Main Tent for coffee, lemonades and for the purchase of Ice. Otherwise, you can leave your wallet back where “civilization” rules. The Burning Man experience is so creative, large and literally engulfing, that you find yourself contributing. In the end, in fact, this is the energy behind the event. It has indeed become something of a culture of its own, led by enterprising artists and Internet-savvy art geeks and it provides a wonder of stuff – nearly indescribable, really. Night time scenes see amazing high tech lighting and nocturnally-inspired art work:
And the “Mobile Art”, lol. The Art Cars have institued their own world of whimsy, now featuring an Art Car Festival in Houston, Texas and a natural outgrowth of the male need to tinker and play, lol. Needless to say, these were always my favorites:
Some are just for fun
Some are more serious:
And these are just the “cars”. The art?
This is what grownups can do, lol…………
A pretty solid visual feast, no matter how you look at it.
Then it disappears – in 3 days, it will be as if no one had even been there.
From these, the Fire Temple of wood, above and two years of The Man below:
2008:
From this……….
To this:
It’s all good, interesting, exciting and always weird – which is the point. It’s is the single most Artistical Artical Event ever.
I love Yew Dell Gardens. Located just outside Louisville, Kentucky by just a few short miles, it is one of America’s most unique, eccentric and yet lush gardens. It’s history I already included in the updated post below this one. That particular post was my first visit there and it was in the Fall. I describe its history in far more detail there.
But there is something of the ‘Anarchist In Us All’ that stretches imaginations and challenges the senses in this minor masterpiece of garden artisan-ship. Yes, the superlatives are flowing. I just always find it hard not to go a bit nutso when I describe this very cool and interesting place. It offers some bizarre brain food – from haunting images such as the lonely but somehow eloquent message in “The Hand” in the middle of the field below, to the raft of strangely-colored hybrid plants, cooked up via the hard work of the early owners. Those who have taken over the running of this intriguing spot have completely “bought in” to the originator’s designs and intent. We gain immensely from this, all of us.
(click all images to enlarge)
In a great bit of serendipity, the garden was also featuring sculptures mixed in with the plantings, offering them for exhibit and sale. I especially liked the limestone carvings of this artist, Don Lawlor, a sculptor with this website which is way worth a look:
Tucked around Mr. Lawlor’s fascinating bird bath are the curiously-colored and unique (to me, anyway) Coleus plants which we found in abundance and – to our delight – in a literal rainbow of hues, some very subtle and muted and some very bright and incredibly playful colors.
Check out these bright red babies:
We just missed the Astilbe Show behind these gorgeous plants, but other blooms and invading, competing flowers and plants make this riot of color a pure visual feast. I remarked to my Mom, who laughed: “Man, those are red enough to be a flower!!”
And the Coleus love did not stop there. When I mentioned “subtle”, I meant it. This stunning example of understated elegance provides the perfect foreground and lush perimeter for the rose behind it.
Other Coleus had different designs, such as this one with the blood vessels:
Or this bright yellow, quite playful beauty, shown here at the entrance in excessive plenty:
A peaceful beauty surrounds the lucky visitors, complete with heart warming people who work there and who never fail to be cheery and as helpful as they can be. Below is a most peaceful image, placed near the famous Holly Walk. My good friend The Happy Monk got himself all married there. And it took!!
Proof that romance can flower near……….well……….flowers. But that’s redundant again. Like deja vu, all over again.
Mother and I wandered a piece, curious about adjoinging areas. The reason I bring this up is that we found what was either the original “Holly Walk” or else the practice field for Holly Walking. Kentucky is a basketball-crazy state. It led us to wonder if an area like this might not actually be for super tall basketballers. Don’t laugh. When I said they’re crazy about basketball, I wasn’t just “Whistlin’ Dixie”. Anyway, we felt delighted with what was for us a discovery.
We’re easy that way.
Back to………..hmmmmmmmmmmmm………….how about a few ‘Naked Ladies’?
It’s the Amaryllis Belladonna Show! This Naked Lady is native South African plant – a bulb – which has the most interesting pattern of growing with a fairly graceful foliage, then losing the leaves while the blooms appear. The nickname seems rather obvious, too, I would think. Groves such as this are plentiful at Yew Dell – small, shady realms of sub canopy beauty which the garden takes immense advantage of. To me, the groves such as this are one of its true draws.
We were fortunate enough to happen by this particular grove while it was being watered by a good old fashioned oscillating sprinkler. What made it most interesting were the water trails, mixed with the interesting apparent motions of the pants themselves and the additon of this shimmering sort of sculture, smack in the midst of it all:
Other groves of interest to me: (a small glass sculpture paradise, complete with wind-swept, spent lilies.
A Hosta Paradise, featuring – but not restricted to – Hosta Giants with its very own Fertility Sculpture (always handy! ):
This is getting long………..more in a day or two………….OK, one more sculpture:
By now, we’ve all probably heard this track. It has become wildly popular in some circles. They are an Icelandic Band, home of some very serious musical talent by my judgments. Anyway, I do recall hearing this once a while back but just “re-found” them recently.
So I came late!! Sue me, then. I dare ya.
I absolutely love this moving and highly spiritual track and I was absolutely riveted by the fine work done by the BBC on the video. The seasonal changes in Greenland – I am sure – and the High Arctic in general just plain take the breath away as does that most interesting couple and family we run across in the video.
Peaceful, exotic, unusual, Yew Dell gardens is not your everyday visit. While they have the most gorgeous groupings of evergreens in their classic routine – with smaller, lower-growing species below and the taller groupings behind in a wash of evergreen textures, and all developed carefully over time – there is much more here. Even the more deciduous areas were constructed with the longer view, which means depth, color and structural form of an incredibly appealing nature.
First the evergreens:
Then those more deciduous groupings:
This is a garden that would have to have been a nursery-owner’s delight. Experiments galore still stud the grounds in a riot of stable,aged and standard plantings, mixed with some real bizarre eye candy. Lovingly constructed by the instigator of all this and his loving wife, Theodore and Martha Klein had them some real fun. Here is a short blurb taken from their website ( http://www.yewdellgardens.org/):
“Beginning with 33-acres of Oldham County farmland in 1941, Theodore and Martha Lee Klein spent the next 60-plus years developing an exquisite private estate, a successful commercial nursery and an extensive collection of unusual plants and outstanding gardens. Known locally, nationally and internationally as a first-rate plantsman, Theodore Klein was also a self-taught artisan who personally crafted the buildings and gardens that became known as Yew Dell.
Through the years, Klein collected over one thousand unusual specimen trees and shrubs which were displayed and evaluated in his arboretum. He also worked to develop new plant varieties for the regional landscape, amassing an impressive list of more than 60 unique introductions over his professional career.”
A perfect example of the level of “whimsy” Mr. Klein brought to bear on his property rests here, in the form of his small “Castle”:
Mr. Klein’s love of and appreciation for stone work is redolent throughout the entire place. His walls and even other entire buildings show a severe appreciation for the beauty and form of stone houses, walls and steps into gardens:
I love this wall. It reeks, somehow, of Kentucky, reminding one of the rows and rows of “slave walls” dry set and loose along the roads around horse farms in Central Kentucky:
In the end, however, it remains the plantings which left the largest impression on this visitor. Here is a series of different-colored Xanthosoma – ranging from a lime green, through a cultivar featuring deep purple stems to another entirely purple variety which absolutely stunned me with its deep purple tone and downright uniqueness. (Check out the reverse side of those gorgeous huge leaves and how they become a dustier “negative” of their reverse):
The velvety texture of the darker portion is hard to capture on camera, but it feels just as lush as it looks.
The fact is, the garden’s fascination with “Purpurea’s” of all types does not stop at those uncanny Xanthosomas. Here is a tiny set of purple Shamrocks -
Odder yet – and tons more purple – is this most surprising Mimosa Tree:
The Yew Dell Garden is a true delight. It’s a bit smaller than I had thought it would be but they manage to cram all sorts of fascinating, weird, wild and wonderful stuff into it in a riot of species, colors and form. We caught it at the onset of Autumn, so we missed a lot of some equally-unusual annuals and the perennials which had just pretty much finished doing their thing.
Frances at FaireGarden will appreciate their love of that gorgeous Muhley Grass, however, stuck as it is here at the entrance to the place -
Fearless, experimental and plain fascinating, sculptures are sporadically placed around the Gardens in auspicious spots as well.
I was particularly taken with The Hand – the sculpture which opened up this post at the top. It’s stark posturing in the middle of a wide expanse of grass just speaks volumes to the unique perspective this gorgeous and interesting garden exudes in so many ways:
Here’s a walkway through some pruned Holly Trees, hard by those purple Xanthosomas and another sculpture. Like I said – the interesting stuff just doesn’t quit.
I confess to my own bias – I am also fascinated with purple as a garden color for some strange reason – and maybe that’s it – the strangeness. But Yew Dell certainly has it in abundance, combined with other slices of absolute uniqueness.
Color everywhere – even in Fall – this garden is well worth anyone’s visit. Eccentric gardens are not that unusual in North America. I know a family in British Columbia who once made themselves a small retreat out of Rhododendrons and Azaleas which got bigger than themselves. Some of these places are now parks people gladly pay to visit in season. Yew Dell, motivated by a nurser and handy man with resources has become every bit of that.
My good and hard-working friend Rick Barrett analyzes his most recent impossible situation, looking for clues. We got a call from a designer in Portland who designed this most interesting water feature from the comfort of her drawing board. While we agreed it would be a beautiful edifice, we also wondered just how we’d pull it off. The notion of hanging the deep black slate, composed of various thicknesses but the same color, off a block cement wall posed some bizarre and – to us – new material. It would have to be cement, owing to the varied thicknesses of the slate. All sort of adhesives could do the job, but the thickness thing hung us up. We needed a material which would allow us some “squeeze room” in order to have the absolutely perfect outer dimensions to align. Anything other than perfection – with water flowing over it – would show up like crazy. And this referred not only to the top lip, where it would be grievous if not straight, but the front and sides as well.
Of course, I neglected to mention that the plan also called for adding real rocks at the front and a corner of both levels of the falls system, making the cement idea even more emphatically needed.
(click on any image to enlarge)
So we arrived at a conclusion – erect the walls first, then nail burlap to the block walls, which would give the cement something to grab onto. It would also allow us just enough “wiggle room” to align all the slabs of slate so that they matched at every possible angle. Now, inasmuch as we are working with a natural stone product, total perfection would be absurd, layered and split as they are. But I believe Rick got very, very close.
He’s a working dude!
I missed many episodes, picture-wise, as the construction proceeded, which I now regret. Often, we were busy elsewhere from the rear of the home, working on the landscaping out front or one the sides, which involved irrigation and the construction of some garden carpentry projects. Rick did almost every bit of the water feature by himself. He also – it bears mentioning – erected the stone walls. I thought his work was masterful and so did the client and even the designer.
The blue tarp, for the record, was not only handy for preventing the brick walls from getting splashed with wet cement or from the splatter from the debris of brick and stone-cutting, but it also doubled as a “rain roof”, keeping the guys and the stuff dry.
Generally speaking, here it is on the day we pretty much left, all done up and proper.
Quite a change from the first shots…………..note the stones – and not only the Basalt Chrystal cemented around using that “exposed aggregate” concrete finish. Note as well the insertion of natural stones by the bottom basin as well, sort of stuck into the patio floor finish. It added a natural touch. The patio is also cantilevered over the water, allowing us to hide the water pump which sits in the bottom basin. There is far more to this project than meets the eye, I guess is what I am saying.
A bit longer view -
Now closer -
With some cool garden carpentry in the form of these trellises.
A path meandering through a garden can serve many purposes. They can be fun, enlightening, whimsical – they have a gazillion different possibilities. Their substance can be paved or loose gravel and every thing in between – in fact, the composition and the design of garden paths could be a website and a discipline all its own.
Obviously, the most common reason for a garden path is to allow persons to see and work there. The other “most obvious” use is to actually get somewhere – across a garden to the back fence, to a shed or facility. But it can often be “designed for discovery” – small surprises beyond the eye which are revealed by traversing the path. It can be designed for an overall organic focus – a sort of ‘Feng Shui’ notion, operating to organize a garden into elements which not only stand out but which fit in perfectly with their surroundings. An open door or window in a fence can absolutely welcome us – revealing its “purpose” when we accept what it asks of us and we look or wander through it. In Classical Chinese Gardens, like this one in Portland, Oregon, both the composition of the walking surface and the openings play a role in making us interested as well as comfortable in a rather formal setting:
(click any image to enlarge)
Our own homes have a similar but different demand. We are less interested in being formal, for one thing. Plus, we don’t have budgets to support what a Chinese Garden can supply. We also have a secret: we can do whatever the heck we want and make it look good over time. And sometimes, simplicity rules anyway:
The basic idea is to keep the feet out of the garden dirt, to keep feet from compacting soil and disturbing the overall look in general. One can use any number of products – here, for example, is a system of round exposed aggregate stepping stones wandering around a water feature and providing access for a hose and a place to watch duffers plying their addicitons on the golf course below:
Natural stones, too, can provide a gorgeous walking system in a garden. Set close together, as in this grouping, it’s the next thing to a sidewalk:
This one winds for quite a while, out into the garden. From here:
Alongside this “swamp” we engineered – “where the wild things are!” -for this Portland home, stuck as it was beneath the level of the road out front:
The series of Panorama pictures from my older files below show the path as it wanders alongside the edge of the bog. Its terminus is the little “mini patio” where the bench offers a relaxing place to enjoy the riot of all the various bog plantings we were able to conjure up, including flowers which don’t exist outside of real wetlands:
Please enlarge for the real effect.
A better view of the plantings. I always liked this project, right from the first. First of all, it was originally owned by Kevin Duckworth – a huge man, center for the Portland Trail Blazers pro basketball team for a while, all 7′ 2″ of him. (that’s about 2.25 meters for you non-Americans, lol). Secondly, it presented a humongous problem. Yes, the street and anywhere we could imagine to take the semi-copious amounts of drained water from this big site implied a pumping and collection system which was neither plumbed for nor electrically close by. We decided to go with a swamp/bog, knowing that the mosquito problem in Portland is hardly serious. It actually worked perfectly and, as mentioned, we were able to arrange plantings which grew so well that we had to thin them out after less than a year. Cool project. The circular thing below hooks up to a garden hose and rotates, swirling water out and creating small, real live rainbows.
Back to the pathways……….
On a drier scale, natural stones can be their own effect, set in a sparsely-planted, desert-like design:
Harsh but still interesting, with much outside the confines of the yard to attract the eye.
And there are more………..pathways to guide us and take us places – places to work or just admire.
The beauty is that anyone can install these themselves. These systems are made for the do-it-yourself landscaper who has some time and energy and a will to create his own space. The truth is, it is one of the single most enjoyable operations of installing landscapes. Give yourself a firm underside, slide your stone in place, fill up the edges of the stone so the tipping is minimized and you’re pretty much off to the races. Or, in this case, “off to the wanders”.
I’ll no doubt place these sporadically because the meat of this blog is landscaping and not all of these figures – in fact only one – is a landscaper. But I also believe we can do things such as this not only as exercises to explain ourselves to others, but to actually honor that which they accomplished. There is always merit in praising those who deserve it. It gives them a wider audience and writing about their influence on myself supplies information about what they mean to the world – even if it merely my small corner.
(Click any image to enlarge)
There is no personal rating system which quantifies these values. Just the fact that I simply know what effect their products and work have had on my life. But let me begin with one who talks about a value and a process without which I would not be able to do this blog. I am, if nothing else, about working. The tasks of landscaping – among the many in this kaleidoscopic field – involved serious quantities of dead lifting. I once tried to figure out the total weight of an average day’s efforts, where I moved one heavy thing to another location and I believe I came up with somewhere around five tons. Now, earlier when I was younger, this would have all been moved by hand – moved by wheelbarrow or shovel and rake. Later, of course, I did less, although, because I got smarter and began finding budgets and tools to support machines for the work I had once labored over, I bet the tonnage moves up substantially. Well, anyway, it does not have to be as hard or as onerous as it seems. In spite of how brutal it felt at the times – Lord, how many of those??? – I made out OK, after all. But in the end I thoroughly enjoyed it and I got some spiritual fulfillment from a guy who has always been all over work about the “value of work” – Eric Hoffer.
Eric Hoffer posed himself as The Everyman, although, the truth is he considered himself far more aligned with the stragglers and the “underclass”. He believed that work and the development of a trade which one does well is a rite of passage for young men and that the affluence of the post war period of the 50’s and 60’s contributed to a longer “adolescence”, in that this development was often avoided – sometimes through the advice of parents: “If you don’t get your degree, you’ll be in Viet Nam or longshoring or digging ditches!” He thus earned the title of “conservative” from academics – whom he also criticized for being very desirous of power but who also bit the hands that fed them. When called an intellectual, he insisted that he was a longshoreman. Hoffer has been dubbed by some authors as “longshoreman philosopher.” Academics had a hard time with Hoffer.
As a kid of 5, in 1907, in New York City, his mother fell while holding him, down a flight of stairs. She died two years later from complications of that fall and Eric lost his sight at the age of 7. He also lost much of his memory as well. It was 8 years later when his sight miraculously returned and one of the prominent desires he had always had came to fruition – he read books like crazy. He remained a voracious reader his entire life.
He moved at the age of 20 to Los Angleles where he figured a poor man could live in such weather. He lived on the street and sold oranges door-to-door until he realized he was a natural salesman and he could make good money. Uncomfortable with that idea, he quit. He was in something of a downward spiral and he attempted suicide and failed but it “scared him straight”. The experience gave him a new determination to live adventurously. It was then he left skid row and became a migrant worker, and then, after that 5 year phase he took on various odd jobs, finally moving to San Fransisco in 1941. He tried joining the war effort but was rejected because of a hernia so he did what he thought would help most by becoming a longshoreman at the docks. He settled down and stayed for the remainder of his life, working at the docks until he was 65. He began writing then and even ended up with a column as time went by.
Hoffer’s first book caused quite a sensation: “The Ordeal of Change”. In a nutshell, Hoffer addresses one of his most fascinating themes, mass movements and mass psychology. I happen to like this stuff as well, but Hoffer always and forever included the working man in his diatribes. Indeed, it is the premise from which this all flows. The most central theme of all, for Hoffer is self-esteem.
Self Esteem
Hoffer focused on the consequences of a lack of self-esteem. He assumed self-esteem is granted by labor and by accomplishment in the real world. But he saw other puzzles of a grander sort when he stopped to analyze the totalitarian movements that caused World War 2. He postulated that fanaticism and self-righteousness are rooted in self-hatred, self-doubt, and insecurity. As he describes in True Believer, he believed a passionate obsession with the outside world or with the private lives of other people is merely a craven attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one’s own life. In this simple assumption is where my own considerations merge with his. Granted that’s a simple bit of logic, yet it tells us much in just that simplicity.
Hoffer always contended that the world was “changing too fast”. To quote Wikipedia’s succinct passage explaining this:
“In Hoffer’s view, rapid change is not a positive thing for a society, and too rapid change can cause a regression in maturity for those who were brought up in a very different society than what that society has become. He noted that in 1960s America, many young adults were still living in extended adolescence. Seeking to explain the attraction of the New Left protest movements, he characterized them as the result of widespread affluence, which, in his words, “is robbing a modern society of whatever it has left of puberty rites to routinize the attainment of manhood.”
Furthermore:
“Hoffer further notes that the reason working-class Americans did not by and large join in the 1960s protest movements and subcultures was they had entry into meaningful labor as an effective rite of passage out of adolescence, while both the very poor who lived on welfare and the affluent were, in his words “prevented from having a share in the world’s work and of proving their manhood by doing a man’s work and getting a man’s pay” and thus remained in a state of extended adolescence, lacking in necessary self-esteem, and prone to joining mass movements as a form of compensation.”
Make no mistake, the actual issues of The Movement during that time were relevant. Women’ Rights, racial equality, corporate accountability, an unproductive war sending 400 kids a week home in bags were all compelling as they could possibly be. They burst through and are as relevant even now. Those times saw the intersection of an incredible number of changing things. Bear in mind as well that that generation were raised with the specter of Nuclear War as real as anything we can imagine. I know my dreams were full of fearsome mushroom clouds and unearthly destruction, too.
For Me
I am a fan. He is the working man’s common sense philosopher who butted his head against the Freudians and the academics of his day, extremely unfashionable yet amazingly penetrating. Hoffer’s lack of a formal college education contributed to his independent thought, and his books remain as insightful and just as classic today.
I recall first reading him and reveling in how much plain common sense it all made. Eric Hoffer hit me like a ton of bricks right when I was most ready for him, I believe. I just felt fortunate to have run across a man who valued work in an era when it actually seemed – and does, still seem – to not matter in people’s assessment of what it takes to be happy. His commentary on the mass movements of modern politics should be primary reading for anyone who wonders how these movements form and how the develop more.
It’s all a puzzle but it also explains my views of life and work. It has much to do with this blog inasmuch as I am working here, too. Since I am working, and since I get some self-esteem from this project, I feel it’s natural to explain why. I do promise this will be a rather final statement about self-esteem. I like it – we all like it – it works to make a body feel good. Everything else is as it should be, I reckon.
“Fractured Basalt” is essentially another name for rock and boulders who were displaced or dynamited apart to become either the boulders that they are or to become an excellent crushed gravel product, suitable for the bases of roadways the world over. They show a “fractured” appearance because they have been – fractured, that is.
(click any image to enlarge)
Obviously, I don’t hesitate to use them in water features of my own as the picture above testifies. Living in the West, we see relatively younger mountain ranges and stone complexes and it is not unusual in the slightest to see this sort of conglomeration. Aside from that, these stones have fabulous color and shapes. They combine well with other types of stones, to add to their appeal for a designing landscaper.
Arriving on a site, these boulders can be intimidating. Local quarries in both Reno and Portland, Oregon deliver this rock in massive, 20-25 yard quantities at the end of these long semi end dump trailers which reach to the sky when dumping. You want to give these guys some flat ground to dump on, trust me. Anyway, once you get a few of these loads, the work of selection gets intense. They come in wonderful and surprising shapes which challenge an orderly mind like few other things.
Arriving at a result such as the one below is weird ……………..when the picture below it is how you began
Pretty big mess…….. My favorite thing.
Just a bit later – But these stones are obviously not the rolled upon and rounded river and glacial rocks of the former post. These have edges, breaks and – often – fabulous color in their own right.
In yet another water feature, we can get an idea of the deeper colors and the variety of shades these basalt boulders have -
Some of the shades are remarkably different. Truly, not all fractured rock is “fractured basalt” – one can, in fact, find Quartz in the local mountains around Reno of impressive size and amazingly white or absolutely “clear” quality. There is a “Quartz Mountain” just west of town which has been a garden resource for countless devoted quartz lovers and gardeners. It used to be that people would drive up and just load out whatever took their fancies. Below is an idea of what one of these boulders looks like in its natural setting:
Here is a browner toned basalt piece in Portland we worked into a small water feature.
Split further, they make fabulous stones for walls and for garden path ways. We’ll see much more about the possibilities of garden paths in the very near future.
Back to the fractured basalt, here’s an example of yet another water feature, done in Portland, using the fractured rock.
We now venture back into “bubble rocks”, split or fractured rocks we like so much, we pay to have them cored for water to run over there surfaces.
And another:
I took a chance once using a mulch of this stuff – in a billion different sizes. There was a quarry nearby and the client was game to try something I mentioned I thought might work well. So we used the fractured stones as a mulch, in combination with larger pieces of the same ilk. I knew it would turn out good andf it did – right from the start.
It was a lot of rock!
A year later, it looked as good and remained nice and easy to maintain.
Even the front yard benefited from these interesting stones. I think the mixture of the deep green lawn and those gray-blue rocks are very effective.
I typically have worked with 3 major categories of rocks and boulders in the landscapes I have designed and installed. Since I am newly-arrived in Kentucky, the more “Eastern U.S.” types of boulders and rocks – the Shales and the Limestones – have not been much in my headlamps. I truly admire their potential as the prior post points out. Particularly the limestone slabs interest me, with their horizontal possibilities. The list of more Western boulder types is this:
1. Rounded River Rocks, smoothed by tumbling under glaciation and running water
2. Fractured basalt rocks, into which I include “Glacial Schist” – also included in the Basalt rock column would be the pillars and crystalline rocks of basalt origin
3. Igneous rocks of particular individual merit……….and I guess I could include Fossilized Rock – ‘petrified wood’ – as well, since I have actually used it in landscapes.
River/Glacial Boulders
I find these multi-utility rocks.Theycome in large numbers, very naturally. Aside from how we view the West, it was real wet at one time, with glaciers advancing and retreating, big boulders and small ones tumbling under mile-thick coverings of ice. As well, many rocks sat under water and the incessant pounding of running water rounded them off into interesting and sometimes literally circular shapes.
In landscaping, I like using these for water features (insert “duh!”), owing to the natural affinity with water in all its guises. I use them also for constructing artificial creek beds which double for a site as drainage trenches, moving rainfall and snow melt off the property and directing it where we want it to go. These are a delight to construct:
We assume the most natural effects in making these. Notably, for example, water will encounter an obstacle – such as a large rock – and find a way around it, thus the curving parts of my artificial creeks have larger boulders at junctures where the bends take place. We also try and find what would be a natural course, including its origins. When things make sense, the senses agree.
As can be seen above, I also use these to solidify a hillside as well. Inserting boulders does indeed help with erosion control, sitting all hefty and attractive, they supply ideal locations for planting as well as for diverting tides of water.
The picture below has a bunch of grouped boulders “Keyed” to prevent an erosive collapse onto what will eventually become an expensive and very long concrete driveway. They retain a secure place, especially when we add channels to it which will direct the water away. Nevertheless, this being such entirely new, basically ’sculpted’ and not very compacted terrain, and composed of soft, dusty, silty material, we did what we could to avoid future problems. It turned out, the first year, we were glad we did.
And we play, too, attempting to make remarkable pieces of art out of our soil and rock sculptures. For example, on this same property, we made sets of stairs out of large, up to one ton boulders, in two different locations. These stairs are not for everyday traffic but they were still functional, keeping one’s shoes out of the dirt and garden – the intent of any garden pathway.
The steps are on the right in this picture. If you enlarge it, you can far more detail and I am really not all that at editing pictures to show the features I want most to focus on. I just take them.
The above picture is taken at the bottom level, just as Spring had arrived and in time for us to address the disasters which a 100 year rain event had caused. We were more than a little glad we had taken what steps we did take to minimize erosion damage. It could have been worse. This project was about 6 months old at this time – in construction terms, from when we began.
This is another level up, between the home itself and a huge garage where garden tools and an RV shed are located. The stairs here are obviously on the right.
Other functional and very playful uses of these rocks carry a softening effect to hard surfaces -
The intrude into the lines we devise, offering a small anarchy
But my single most primary usages of these gorgeously-shaped stones is generally related to their natural affinity with water.
I thought the Indians got a great deal selling Manhatten for $22 worth of glass baubles, myself. I’da been cheaper! I am moved by the baubles made by the human hand. Just as the stained glass in the great churches moved men and women to forget their meager and hard-fought existences, witnessing God’s glory and the promise of better lives in those Holy Places – be they Mosque or Temple or the Great Cathedrals of Europe – now, from the hands of fabulous craftsmen and women such as Helen Nock, we get yet another near-religious experience. We are now enabled to witness a shameless exposure to radical artistic design – equally powerful in many ways and definitely as mesmerizing. Helen – like the architects of those inspirational devices of churches – also loves experimenting with her own version of killer baubles, enjoying the dimensional frames they fool us with and beguile us with so dearly – and with a playful sense of love at the same time. Art with a smile never looked so good.
Don’t laugh. When I said they’re crazy about basketball, I wasn’t just “Whistlin’ Dixie”. Anyway, we felt delighted with what was for us a discovery.
