I emerged from my truck into a lush summertime landscape of tall grass surrounded by carefully planted yet unruly flower gardens surrounding a cozy home and numerous outbuildings. It warmed my heart to see signs of life everywhere I looked. There were paths with vine covered archways and children’s toys lying about, abandoned wherever they were last used. I walked a path surrounded by flowers to the front door of a well-aged house that had been at one time the focus of my work. The color of the wood shingles had darkened to that color that only time can bring. The trim on the door had softened corners from the caress of many hands.
The inner door was open behind an equally old wooden screen door. The warm afternoon sun mixed shadows and light on the wood floor. My tentative knock was answered by a little boy with long hair as unruly as the flower beds. Clearly excited by my unexpected presence, he looked back and loudly announced, “A man is here!”. His mother came to the door, carrying his little sister in her arms, and said hello in a way that invites, but does not demand an explanation. Her manner, calm, comfortable, self-assured was the essence of that place.
I introduced myself, saying, “Hi, I’m Wayne, I built this house and just wanted to come back and see how it was doing. Although we had never met, she smiled warmly as if I were an expected friend, “Oh my, Thank You so much, we love this house! I’m Laura, this is my son Chester, and this is Vivian. Please come in and see what we’ve done with it".
Within what seemed like a minute and as natural as it could be, I had Chester in my arms , and we were off on a tour. She showed me things they had added to the house to make it their home. We visited rooms I had built, where memories came of my successes, and the occasional flaw that only I knew existed. In every space and in every corner, there was evidence of a family living here. Children’s drawings hung from walls, in a doorway, I could see where the mom had marked her kids’ height on the door jamb as evidence of each growth spurt, labelled with a date. Potted plants and favorite things rested in corners that had once been occupied by builder’s levels and boards waiting to be used.
We stepped through the back door and walked a path to the largest of the outbuildings. It was a perfectly made compliment to the house that I had created. It, like the house, multi-leveled, was airy and light with many large windows, with a carefully made, comfortable staircase that led to alcoves littered with the tools of creative work, and kid things. Her husband was an artist and musician, away for an exhibition of his work. She painted, mothered kids, and continued the work of making this place a home.
“This is where we work,” she told me. “We tried to make it an extension of the house, but separate so that we could leave the mess of our work for the next time”.
She then showed me a second outbuilding: a beautiful little woodshed half full of split logs that would provide the family’s winter warmth. She was proud of it because she had nailed on the cedar shingles herself while her husband traveled. The studio and shed were connected by flower gardens whose blooms and vines extended all the way to the edge of the woods that surrounded the once empty dirt lot where I had parked my truck every day for a year of my life. Everywhere I looked, life was happening, kids were being nurtured, and dreams were coming true. This home was functioning exactly as intended, evolving to nurture a family in all the phases of life and growth. Seeing how she had made that house their home, I felt a deep sense of purpose and satisfaction. It was more than pride in my workmanship, but in feeling that there was good karma here. That karma, if you believe in such a thing, had carefully been built-in as my crew and I worked day to day to create a home. I was glad to see that the love of craft in building it had taken seed, and was now so evident.
We parted with hugs, smiles, and a mutual appreciation for the work that we had both done to create this place, and the love we brought to it.
I suppose that building a house could be a simple exercise in cutting boards and fastening them in some logical order to enclose a space. The enclosure concept itself is simple with the component parts, floor, walls, ceiling, roof, as flat simple panels that will indeed provide shelter, but perhaps not much in the way of spiritual uplift. As I see it, my work, and the purpose in doing that work, is building spaces that house and nurture the people who live in them. That is, to sculpt a space that energizes, brings peace, and inspires creativity, providing an environment that nurtures us and our families.
I remember well the building of that house, and how It had been so pleasant to work within a secluded clearing in the woods. There, I felt the construction effort only briefly interrupted an abiding sense of calm in those woods that would quickly return once we left. . With a sense of honoring a special place, we worked carefully in what, to me, is my art form, sculpting living space. As I built each room, I thought about how those spaces might be used and what they would feel like as the day’s light changed. I imagined the house being lived in.
Although we finished the house many years ago, I can remember the details of events that occurred while building it as vividly as if they had taken place last week. There were days when we planned our work for the day over morning coffee and then perfectly executed our plans, and there were days when unexpected challenges and setbacks delayed progress. All in all, a typical build, but no less important for that fact. Then, finally, there came the day when ownership, spiritually and physically, transferred to the new inhabitants. As an artist, a full-time mom and their kids built their lives in that home, they probably never thought about the builder who had originally envisioned and created it. But, over the years, I thought about them.
I feel this way about all the homes that I build. This house was one of many fondly remembered houses, that for a time had my attention, the best craftsmanship that I had to offer, and the pure intent of creating a home.
I had embarked on a road trip whose purpose was to revisit some of the houses I had built, and to explore my success in transforming raw wood, metal, and plaster into important places for people. The artist’s house was the first on that journey. Prior to this visit, it had been a freshly shingled salt box on a barren dirt lot. Now, it was a home that a family would fondly remember for the rest of their lives as “their” house. As I drove away, I sensed with satisfaction, “My time here was well spent”.