Misty Watercolor Memories

Many people ask me various questions about my past, how I became an artist, etc.. Here are some photos from my past, added to as I can, with short stories explaining

ABOUT THE PHOTO BELOW . When I was thinking of building my first studio building, I thought post and beam to be a good choice, as I had many large pines on my newly acquired property, and I much preferred hardwoods. So, I decided to take down the pines and let the hardwoods better develop. Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts was a place I visited often (as my son will attest to “oh no, not Sturbridge village again”). On one of my visits, we watched a man hand hewing beams with a hewing ax, and I thought “I can do that”. So I acquired an antique hewing ax, learned how to mark the logs out for squareness and how to go about hewing them. I cut the pines into appropriate lengths, and began. This shows me with a few of them, and with my neighbors daughter, Kara, who used to come over to watch.

I had hewed quite a few beams for my post and beam studio, but I also had a large pile of rocks I accumulated from developing the gardens. So, after drawing out a few different designs for my new studio, I decided to build with the stones rather than wood. I designed with my intended uses in mind, and sized it accordingly, keeping in mind also the amount of stone I had. It was supposed to be about 10 inches higher, but I ran out of stone, and redesigned it with just a section over the front door being the height I planned to accommodate the door properly. My next door neighbor offered the few stones needed to finish that area. The roof was designed at the steep pitch seen so I could have full use of the second floor without building the walls higher, easier and I thought better looking. The rafters are 24 ft. long. Most of the lumber was from a local lumber mill, all doors and windows were home made in a simple inexpensive fashion, the stones were all from my yard (free) and the bricks were acquired from a torn down restaurant in Boston. All the cement work was done with a mortar pan and shovel, the foundation area and interior all dug out with a shovel, other tools were all inexpensive tools, circular saw, jigsaw, handsaw, and hammer. No cement mixer or specialty tools of any type, and all materials needed (sand, cement, gravel etc.,) picked up in my little Mazda B2000. Total cost of the building was under $2000.00 , quite a good price even years ago. I had images in my mind of stone buildings in Europe, and came across an article in Fine Homebuilding magazine leading me to a book by Earnest Flagg, “Small Houses Their Economic Design and Construction”, written around 1922. This was long before Amazon, and the only way I was able to acquire the book was at the Boston Public Library. It was in their art section, not to be loaned, so I went with rolls of coin for the copy machine, and copied the whole book. It was invaluable for the building methods used as well as the many inspirational photos and text. Excellent book, which has since been reprinted and is now available inexpensively. Highly recommended not only for those building from stone, but to anyone looking for beautiful home designs, as Flagg designed a large number of beautiful homes pictured in the book. These could, relatively easily, be adapted for building with wood. (I used the book for his techniques of building, not for the design). See photo below for the finished stone studio building, and some of the garden that the stones came from. Everywhere I dug, stones. Now in South Carolina, there is not a stone to be found. I have dug and developed a half acre of garden, not one stone of any size.

Photo below, One of my early snow forts, I was about 5 or 6

This is one of the first things I clearly remember building. I was quite young, and spent a full long day, morning to darkness, working on this snow fort, finishing it the next day. I had seen different forts and igloos to inspire me, and was quite proud of this accomplishment. I do recall building, and helping to build, other tree houses and forts out of wood, both before and after this. Building has always been fun for me, especially when you are building something of your own. Building is also less complicated than many people think, and like most things, can be done by most anyone with patience, determination, and desire.

I’ve always had a fondness for old things, cars especially. In this case, it extended to an old pony as well. Peanuts was old when we got her, and had her for a few years before letting her go on to someone else. We lived in a town that at that time had a population of well under 5000, and was considered semi rural. Street plowing at that time wasn’t as good as now, and even when plowed, streets had snow on them for at least a few days, maybe a week. I built a wooden sled, big enough for a few kids and a few groceries, to be pulled by the pony, and we would occasionally take the 2 mile (each way) ride to the store. Me walking the pony with the kids being pulled on the sled behind. It’s the oddball things like this I tend to think of once in a while, and realize how much fun it was at the time. This photo shows the back area when it had the pony house (not seen in this photo), and car, long before it was developed into gardens. Still quite woodsy at this time, I had already taken down almost 3 dozen full size pines, all between 60 and 90 feet tall. A few pieces can be seen in foreground and behind pony. Many I hewed into beams, which I later decided not to use.

Another shot of the stone studio under construction. This is my son Adam helping to crank the beams (floor joists) up into place. It was green wood from a local mill, and they were quite heavy. Didn’t have big ladders, staging, or many tools, so each step along the way parts of the construction were used instead, in this case, the rafters serving as an attachment for the come-along to raise the beams up, making the job much easier. He thought it was great, being a little kid getting these big beams up into place. This also shows a bit of the construction method, where the bricks (around and over the door seen here) were used to support the forms for the walls. The brick corners, around the doors and windows, and in a few other places where needed, were built partway up first. 2x12’s were wedged against the bricks on the corners, doors and windows on each side, stones places face against the front board, and cemented. The next day, the forms could be taken down and moved up, or to another place to repeat the process. So, instead of full forms or other expensive methods, only 4 (or 6, I forget) 2x12’s were needed for the whole building process. On the inside of the walls seen here, you can see the horizontal marks where each section was done between the boards. One more thing of interest to be seen here is the steep angle of the rafters, so that the second floor could be fully used without building walls (less slant and you head would hit the rafters in the outer edges of the room). If I remember correctly, the slant was something like 36 in 12 (typical roofs are between 4 in 12 and 12 in 12). (this means the slant went up 36 inches when you moved in 12 inches). So, with my two foot wide benches around the perimeter or the second floor, the room could be fully used without rafter imposition.