Art Studio

Here sits the Art Studio when I was first introduced to it in April of 2008. This would be my stomping ground, quite literally, for the next six months as I learned the art of natural building at O.U.R.(One Untied Resource) Ecovillage.


There was a whole lot of cob to be made the good ol' "Canadian" way, with boots on and stomping outside of the tarps! It was still a little too cold for barefoot mixing.





We were each given the opportunity to pick a place of focus to work on. I chose to give some attention to the back and curve of the bench. The first thing I did was find and clean the beautiful piece of Arbutus for the top of the back of the bench. This was installed quite a bit more easily then I had expected, with a single screw into the cob, and a re-bar pin into the floor. Elke is seen driving the screw into the cob wall in the image to the right. Nails were also hammered in to provide key for the cob to grab hold of. This thing isn't going anywhere! After this, I started on applying the cob to form the base structure for the bench seat. I got into trimming quite a bit, and the nook started to take more and more shape. Anchors were set in to give a fastening surface for the exquisite piece of maple that was selected for the bench.


The backside of the bench creates the entrance way of the Art Studio's main floor, so I decided on some simple shelves for the space.





My creative energy was able to be released with the wall sculpture. It was fun to play with form, structure, and purpose together. Here is a closeup of the leaf shelf part way up the wall.


The series of images below go through the three final stages of the sculpture, from formation, to mosaic, and then finish colour.


Emilio and Riki were awesome at helping get the aliz just right. The moon was done with a blue aliz, and the sun with a more orange and red swirl. I also placed some large mica in this area to give it some glitter.



More photos of the finished area coming soon...