My latest design project is a house near Yosemite National Park. My clients have started a Nature Conservency on a gorgeous property just outside of Mariposa California.

The house is around 3000 square feet for a family of three and guests.

We’re using reclaimed lumber in exterior and interior applications and the quarzite stone base material is from a local quarry.
Foundations have been created and now construction of the floor has begun. I’ll be posting images throughout the construction process. If you’d like to watch the progress go to webcam under Gallery @
www.Striped Rock Ranch.com

Spring 2007 at Otis College of Art and Design I’m teaching a course called Creative Practices and Responses. This Foundation class gives freshman an opportunity to create their own distinct works within an expanding field of possibilities of materials and methods.

Creative Practices is designed to help students to develop their curiosities in order to discover their passions. The various methods we explore help each future artist or designer to move from daydreaming to rumination, from idea to material choice and completion strategies. Being conscious throughout the process from idea to material selection to making and resolution gives students a sense of a complete creative process. By semester’s end students are well on the way to understanding their personal theory of construction, a process that will continue to evolve over their lifetime of creative endevours.

My Creative Practice and Responses class just finished their first project. We surveyed the history of shoes, looked at shoes from all sides- from necessity to fashion and identity construction. In the “shoe” project each student was given a pair of gently worn shoes chosen from a selection of thrift store finds. First they constructed the identity of the person who wore the gently worn shoes and then went on to develop a personal dilemma - as a person’s character is largely built around the results of their challenges and choices.

Taking care not to illustrate their wearer’s profile and dilemma the students then remade the shoes. This shift from illustration or re-presentation to a more complex notion about creating through the language of form and color opens up more interesting and sophisticated ways to generate meaning in art and design. Using the language of form they transformed the shoes to somehow aid the shoe owner. Rather than illustrating their ideas they learn to create meaning through the materials and manner in which the piece is made.

When the students brought the pair of gently worn shoes into class to contribute to the pool they also brought another pair which once cleaned and repaired have been boxed up and sent to “Soles for Souls” a nonprofit group who send shoes all over the world to those in need.

I’ve uploaded a few of the completed projects here in my journal.