Cassilhaus

The Artists' Shade Garden

In our second project using the wonderful milled cedar from our land, I made a bench for a new shade garden behind our recently completed trellis. 

Ellen had been working on the notion of a small private shade/meditation garden for our visiting artists and we had the perfect shady spot right beside the artist apartment.  My friend Linda loves to do stone work and I asked her if she could make a circular wall around the garden and she jumped at the chance.  Well jumped is perhaps not the appropriate term--it took her a year--but she likes to continually "rework" her art :).

Here Linda and Ellen think big rock thoughts over a power oatmeal breakfast. All of the rocks came from our land as well--we keep finding large troves buried around the property presumably from the days when this was a working farm and the farmers were clearing the fields.

After Ellen and I argued for a while about the location of the bench we put it right in the middle of our two chosen locations which of course turned out to be the best location anyway.

Our summer helper Mark leveled out the ground with more wheelbarrows full of fill than I want to recall and spread some mulch.

Never one to miss an opportunity to go to the plant store to fill up her car, Ellen has started to disperse shade lovers around the area while Frank supervises from the bench.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

                                                            --Marcus Tulius Cicero

 

Durham Literacy Center

Thanks to the generosity of our collector friend, the late Julian Baker, and his family, we came into possession of a trove of beautiful hardwood frames.  I had this old Michael Kenna calendar sitting around which was too beautiful to throw out-printed in Japan on paper made by angels.  I hit upon the idea of using some of the frames to frame up these images and donate them to non profits who were starving for art.  Wonderful intern Lisa and I finished the first 6 and we donated them to the Durham Literacy Center. Reading and literacy were very close to my father's heart so it made me extra happy to work with them.  Photo bellow is Lisa and I with Executive Director Reginald Hodges.