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Homage to Nourishment - pg. 12 | California Greening - pg. 20 | Into the Woods - pg. 32 | Yellow Owl Workshop - pg. 6

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Dear Samuel,

Kermit the Frog tells us, "It's not easy being green," but he mightchange his mind after reading this issue of American Lifestylemagazine. Warm weather means strolling farmers' markets for thefreshest fruits and vegetables. And Anya Kassoff 's book, The VibrantTable, provides plenty of vegetarian recipes for the produce you roundup. The summer bounty salad pops as a side dish, with green beans,radishes, and spices like coriander, cumin, and chopped dill.

Jennifer Lee Segale sees her harvest from a different perspective:natural ingredients perfect for a bath and body line. Segale is aprofessional horticulturist specializing in organic landscape design.When inspiration struck after a walk through a farmers' market in SanFrancisco, she turned her kitchen into a lab of sorts, creating productslike cacao and cardamom oil for family and friends before venturingout into the beauty market.

Architect James Rill respects the environments in which he buildsstructures. In the house in the woods, Rill made great attempts to workwith the existing landscape. The few trees he had to take down wereused in the construction of the house, like the wood floors. Spray foaminsulation, a geothermal hot water system, and an irrigation systemthat uses rain water were among the green features for this project.

There are countless ways to enjoy and celebrate the bounties of theenvironment. Let this issue inspire you to explore the nature in yourown neighborhood. As always, it is a pleasure to send you AmericanLifestyle magazine. Thank you for your continued support throughreferrals.

Van A. Lumbard, President


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DearSamuel,

KermittheFrogtellsus,"It'snoteasybeinggreen,"buthemightchangehismindafterreadingthisissueofAmericanLifestylemagazine.Warmweathermeansstrollingfarmers'marketsforthefreshestfruitsandvegetables.AndAnyaKassoff'sbook,TheVibrantTable,providesplentyofvegetarianrecipesfortheproduceyouroundup.Thesummerbountysaladpopsasasidedish,withgreenbeans,radishes,andspiceslikecoriander,cumin,andchoppeddill.

JenniferLeeSegaleseesherharvestfromadifferentperspective:naturalingredientsperfectforabathandbodyline.Segaleisaprofessionalhorticulturistspecializinginorganiclandscapedesign.Wheninspirationstruckafterawalkthroughafarmers'marketinSanFrancisco,sheturnedherkitchenintoalabofsorts,creatingproductslikecacaoandcardamomoilforfamilyandfriendsbeforeventuringoutintothebeautymarket.

ArchitectJamesRillrespectstheenvironmentsinwhichhebuildsstructures.Inthehouseinthewoods,Rillmadegreatattemptstoworkwiththeexistinglandscape.Thefewtreeshehadtotakedownwereusedintheconstructionofthehouse,likethewoodfloors.Sprayfoaminsulation,ageothermalhotwatersystem,andanirrigationsystemthatusesrainwaterwereamongthegreenfeaturesforthisproject.

Therearecountlesswaystoenjoyandcelebratethebountiesoftheenvironment.Letthisissueinspireyoutoexplorethenatureinyourownneighborhood.Asalways,itisapleasuretosendyouAmericanLifestylemagazine.Thankyouforyourcontinuedsupportthroughreferrals.

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HomagetoNourishment-pg.12|CaliforniaGreening-pg.20|IntotheWoods-pg.32|YellowOwlWorkshop-pg.6

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Dear Bill and Judy,

HISTORY

12

6

CONTENTS

Yellow Owl WorkshopSTAMPS AND CARDS AND TOTES, OH MY!Avid printmaker and owner of a craft workshop, Christine Schmidt waxes poetic on the versatility of stamps, creative childhoods, and ice cream within walking distance.

Homage to NourishmentVEGETARIAN RECIPES FOR A HEALTHY LIFESTYLEFresh and seasonal ingredients abound in the recipes from The Vibrant Table: Recipes from My Always Vegetarian, Mostly Vegan, and Sometimes Raw Kitchen by Anya Kassoff (Roost Books, 2014).

24 Painting the PedestrianTHE ART IN THE ORDINARY Artist Michael Ward paints to document and bear witness to life, and chooses subjects often overlooked to force people to see.

38 Bourbon with a TwistTHE ART OF SALVAGING OAKCraftsman Tony Davis transforms Kentucky bourbon barrels into useful household items, like cutting boards, lazy Susans, and art easels.

32 Into the WoodsBUILDING AMONG THE TREESJames Rill’s architecture is informed by the environment, integrating outdoor elements into the design of the home.

44 Treasure on Couch StreetHOODOO ANTIQUES IN PORTLAND, OREGONMike Eadie’s extroverted personality and love of people’s stories make him an ideal shop owner of a much-loved antiques store on Portland’s Couch Street.

20 California GreeningAN ORGANIC HORTICULTURIST’S TALE Garden Apothecary founder Jennifer Lee Segale has made organic gardening and design her life’s work, including a bath and body product line.

HOMAGE TO NOURISHMENT12

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executivechief executive officer: STEVEN ACREE | chief operating officer: STEVE HUSSON

editorialmanaging editor: SHEllEy GOldSTEiN | editor: RObiN MANROdT

creativedirector: JOSHUA STikE | manager, production: kRiSTiN SwEENEy

manager, design: AliCiA MASTRiAN | traffic coordinator: PAMElA lOVEllproduction artists: SCOTT HiGGiNS, bRiAN FilONE, STEVEN HiGHT,

SHANA SMiTH, MARGARET NEAlER, CHElSEA wOERTHgraphic designers: RACHEl HERSHEy, JORdAN kOlb

print production specialist: bRyAN MATHES web design: dANiEl ACREE | communications: AliCiA dAViES

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PETER wETzEl, MiCHAEl CAMPANilE, liSA MAyS, TiMOTHy bUSHNEll, JOSHUA kRESSlER, TERENCE HOPSON, MEliSSA GARVEy,

AlEXA SMiTH, MATTHEw wiCkMAN, JEN PAUl, MEGHAN dElANEy, ElizAbETH MACON, JASON byRNE, JENNy FUSCO,

administration: kARi kiTCHEN, ERiCA EAby

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productionmanager, pre-press: MATTHEw STREETS | pre-press specialist: SHANNON MOSSERlead press operator: JUdiTH APPEl | press operator: TOdd bEARd, GERAld kEllER

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sales & marketingmanager, national presentation: JASON MATTEy | manager, sales operations: JOSHUA ACREE

senior account executive: JEFF CzERNiAkOwSki | sales manager: lUkE ACREEaccount executives: kATRiNA ETTwEiN, ETHAN ACREE, lUkE JOHNSON,

NiCk biANCO, JOHN SCHEiRER, ERik wAlz, THOMAS SCHwARz, JOHN HOFFACkER, lARRy GRANOFF

accountingcontroller: lAURA HASEN

manager: EdMUNd deANGElO | accounting assistant: ERiC HiRyAk

human resourceshr manager: JENNiFER GUiE | corporate recruiters: CAREy bAllOU, SAM zEFF

Portland, Maine | (800) 255 9454www.angelaadams.com

Handcrafted Rugs and Furniture

AL 76

PRINTING

Avid printmaker and owner of a craft workshop, Christine Schmidt waxes poetic on the versatility of stamps, creative childhoods, and ice cream within walking distance.

S T A M P S A N D C A R D S A N D T O T E S , O H M Y !text: CHRISTINE SCHMIDT photography: AUBRIE PICK

Yellow Owl Workshop

WHAT WAS YOUR CHILDHOOD LIKE? WAS

CREATIVITY ENCOURAGED?

I remember my house being full of creative things. I have three sisters, and my mom was active in making us do crafts. Year-round, we were always making things with our hands. My mom actually ended up becoming an art teacher after that, and taught me in school (she was also the only teacher to send me to the principal’s office). Just having those op-tions and creative resources readily available really gave me the confidence to make art my career.

HOW DID GEOGRAPHY INFLUENCE

YOUR INTERESTS?

I grew up in the Midwest (I am from Kansas City) before moving to Washington, D.C. to go to art school. Once I was in Washington D.C., there were so many amazing muse-ums, many of which were free. Even a broke art student could go in and explore all of the wonderful treasures there. Once I moved to the coast, I became more interested in coastal imagery and would spend my time explor-ing the shores of Maryland. I then moved to New York, which was a big change from D.C. because everything in D.C. has to be smaller than the Capitol building. It was there where I finally found more verticality in my work. While living in this denser population, ele-ments like bikes and little corner stores be-came an influence. Now that I’m on the West Coast, I find the landscape to be just stagger-ingly beautiful. There is so much drama to it that isn’t present on the East Coast.

WHAT ART SCHOOL DID YOU ATTEND? I went to a small, four-year art school in Washington, D.C. called Corcoran School of Art and Design. I studied fine art and did everything from photography to ceramics to printmaking. I really wanted to try my hand at everything I could while I had the facilities available.

AL 98

DID YOU ALWAYS SEE YOURSELF PURSUING

THE FINE ARTS?

I did, thanks to my mom. I think a lot of parents are probably not that excited that their kid is going to art school. It isn’t neces-sarily the greatest career move. But my mom has always been very supportive of that. I have had a lot of random jobs trying to sup-port myself while I got this business started. I was a cake decorator and a mural painter and finisher. I worked as a gallery attendant. I like to think that each of those random expe-riences did help to inform my creative work and also my entrepreneurial sense as a small business owner.

WHAT ART MEDIUMS DO YOU FIND

YOURSELF DRAWN TO AND WHY?

I am most drawn to printmaking because it is amazing that with these humble materials, you can create so many different looks using so many different techniques. With print-making, you can do surface design and textile design. You can adorn three-dimensional ob-jects with two-dimensional designs through image transfer. Printmaking, for me, is the most flexible, and I can do it in a confined space. It doesn’t require a lot of facilities, like a ceramic studio or a traditional photography studio would.

DO YOU FIND YOU ARE MORE CREATIVE

WHEN GIVEN GUIDELINES OR WHEN YOU

ARE GIVEN A BLANK CANVAS?

I actually work both ways. I create a lot of cus-tom goods for Crate and Barrel, for instance. They will come to me with a specific holi-day in mind or a specific event or function in mind, and that can be a good jumping- off point. For my own work, I usually find that I take a meandering path. Maybe I am spurred on by a specific image, or I am really enjoying a specific technique and I want to see what that looks like on a different scale. I tend to look at a drawing and think, “What would this look cool on?” and then I try to figure out a way to make that happen.

HOW WOULD OTHERS DESCRIBE YOU?

I am really not the most organized. I laugh a lot. I am pretty outgoing, but I can also be an introvert. I come from a big family, and ev-eryone just laughs all the time. I tend to sur-round myself with creative people who like to have a good time.

WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT STAMPS?

I love the versatility of the medium, especially the way I create my stamps. It is more fun for me to see what other people make with them. I use individual units—for instance, my land-scape stamp set that is made up of five stamps. You can use the entire motif and create a re-ally large scene, or you can use just one of the stamps and create a gift tag. I think stamps are also really accessible because people are familiar with them. It is an approachable medium, and when people sit down and al-low themselves to play with it, they can come up with a variety of different things. It really excites me to see what other people create with them.

WHICH PART OF THE PROCESS DO YOU

ENJOY MORE—CREATING THE PATTERNS

OF THE ACTUAL STAMPS OR USING THE

STAMPS TO CREATE DESIGNS/ART?

I think they go hand in hand because I am always thinking about how they will be used by the person who is stamping. I always try to keep versatility in mind. I would say, for me, seeing the finished product is really fantastic, especially when the finished product is some-thing I wouldn’t have thought of myself. That is the most rewarding aspect. Making some-thing that allows someone else to be creative is the best prize.

DESCRIBE THE ATMOSPHERE WHERE YOU

WORK. WHAT KIND OF ENVIRONMENT DO

YOU TRY TO FOSTER?

The team is made up of all women who are very friendly. We get all of our goods from lo-cal suppliers and small, US-based companies. All of our products are then assembled on

two long tables in our San Francisco studio. You are very likely to hear a food radio show, Radiolab, or This American Life playing as we work. A lot of the people we employ are cre-ative folks themselves, so it is a plus for us to know that we are creating employment that is supporting other people’s creative lives while they support mine.

DO YOU HAVE A LARGE STAFF?

Currently, we have a staff of five, which some-times increases during the holiday orders. They are all tremendous people. Although I often work from home—I have a two-year-old, so I work by myself at times—it is always fun to be in the studio in this communal at-mosphere. Everyone has become friends, and we are this little community. We have old em-ployees stopping by for lunch. It is a pretty positive place, and I feel lucky. It also helps to have people with different skills surround me, which is a tremendous plus because I tend to be a little disorganized.

WHERE DO YOU FIND INSPIRATION FOR

YOUR STAMP DESIGNS AND NOTECARDS?

It really varies. Most recently, I have been working on getting more texture into my work. In the previous seasons, I was playing around with watercolors, and this season, I have been using mark making to create add-ed depth into the two-dimensional pieces. I put out seasonal designs that interest me at the time. I recently put out stamps that work with two-color ink pads. You can ink differ-ent areas of the stamp with varying colors to create different looks. I had a fun time play-ing around with the color palette on that.

WHERE DO YOU GO WHEN YOU ARE

FEELING CREATIVELY BLOCKED? IS THERE A

TRAVEL DESTINATION THAT INSPIRES YOU?

I wish it was a travel destination! I will take my kid to Dolores Park, which is a great big open park. I will just take a break, walk around, and go shopping there. There are so many cool shops, specifically in the Mission District of San Francisco, which is where my studio is. There are a ton of cool stores run by other small makers from around the coun-try. I find it inspiring to know that people are supporting handmade American goods. Just looking at something that isn’t my own work is a treat too.

You can use the entire motif and create a really large scene, or you can use just one of the stamps and create a gift tag. I think stamps are also really accessible because people are familiar with them. It is an approachable medium, and when people sit down and allow themselves to play with it, they can come up with a variety of different things.

AL 1110

WHAT DOES A TYPICAL DAY LOOK LIKE

FOR YOU?

My daughter gets up at six thirty or seven o’clock, and we get her ready for school. My husband works at City Hall downtown. He takes a train down there, and that is when I start my day. I will check e-mails and In-stagram, have way too much tea, and pretty much just work until around one or two o’clock before stopping for lunch. I might go out for a burrito. Then I will come back and finish working until about five o’clock, and then make dinner. After dinner, I just crash.

DESCRIBE YOUR “HAPPY PLACE,” EITHER

AS A TANGIBLE PLACE OR A SET OF

CIRCUMSTANCES:

Besides spending time with my family, friends, and my daughter, I am most happy when I am in the middle of working and I get that feeling that I am in the zone. You can feel it, but you’re not working for it—it is just flowing with you. That is my happy place, and that can happen anywhere—sketching at a park bench, while I am in my studio, or even on an airplane as an idea strikes me.

WHERE DID THE NAME YELLOW OWL

COME FROM?

I don’t have a good answer for that. I oddly had the business name before I had the busi-ness. I just knew I wanted to do something with my hands. I liked the repetition of the letters. Yellow owls don’t exist (that I know of). Yellow Owl just suited me. I wasn’t think-ing that it would be the longest website name ever. And now that I have to say it twenty times a day, it was perhaps not the best busi-ness decision I’ve ever made, but it suits me.

WAS THE TERM WORKSHOP CHOSEN

ON PURPOSE?

Yes, I knew I was going to make stuff myself. It wasn’t going to be a design studio. It was going to be an approachable workshop where we took care of business.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE STAMP SET AND

YOUR FAVORITE THING TO STAMP?

That is tough. It is always the one that I just did. I have a rose stamp that is new that I re-ally like. I have been into florals lately, and it makes me happy to look at it. I think my

favorite thing is to stamp on fabric. We have these ink pads that work on paper and fabric, and they are very vibrant colors that work on a variety of different surfaces. Because you can stamp on a T-shirt or a canvas lunch bag or a table runner or a napkin, it becomes the most versatile surface to work with. It is good for occasions and small events. It is kind of a way of branding yourself.

IF YOU WEREN’T THE OWNER OF YELLOW

OWL, WHAT WOULD YOU BE DOING?

Getting a lot more sleep than I currently do! I think I would still be doing something in a creative field. But I just can’t imagine not doing this right now, especially since I have been working nonstop the last three months. Maybe I would like working in the kitchen. I also like science, so maybe I would be a scien-tist. (Oh, I could never be a scientist!)

HOW DO YOU FILL YOUR FREE TIME?

Running a business takes up a lot of time, so often my free time is watching terrible televi-sion. We will go walk around North Beach on the weekend, or we will go to the beach. We

will go back to Kansas City where my fam-ily lives, or head to New Jersey and visit my husband’s family.

WHAT IS IT LIKE LIVING IN SAN

FRANCISCO? CAN YOU IMAGINE LIVING

ANYWHERE ELSE?

I have lived in a bunch of places. And since San Francisco has no winter, it is hard to beat. It is a really great, very vibrant town that is very supportive of small business. It is an ecologically aware town, so they also pride themselves on local produce and locally pro-duced goods.

It is changing a lot. We are seeing a second wave of technology moving in that is push-ing the younger creative people out. But it is a great place in general. I think that I would always want to live in a walkable city. If I can’t walk to the corner store and get a pint of ice cream, I don’t want to live there.

FAVORITE FOOD PLACE IN YOUR

NEIGHBORHOOD:

La Palma is delicious. It’s a taqueria that spe-cializes in making their own tortillas, which results in serving amazing tacos and burritos.

DESIGNERS OR ARTISTS YOU ADMIRE AND

HAVE SHAPED YOU:

I think that changes so frequently. Today, I was looking at Paul Klee, Agnes Martin, and the paintings of Henri Rousseau. It really var-ies. Since I am in the business of always hav-ing to create new products, I have to get new inspiration just to keep myself interested, and to keep the attention of the people who buy my wares.

DO YOU HAVE A DREAM CAREER GOAL?

I am living it. I feel really lucky to have the job that I have. I can’t imagine anything bet-ter, except more time off.

WHAT’S PLAYING ON YOUR IPOD?

Right now, Radiolab, but it changes fre-quently. I listen to a lot of talk radio when I’m working, so I love public radio shows. I am also listening to a band called Architecture in Helsinki.

WHERE DO YOU SEE YELLOW OWL

WORKSHOP IN FIVE YEARS?

We had a tremendous response with our Carve-a-Stamp kit, which is a product I was making myself for use. It is two river blocks glued to a stamp block for even carving and impressions for solid printing. We also just released these stencil kits that allow people to use drawing stencils on totes and decals. I find myself thinking more and more about craft kits.AL :: www.yellowowlworkshop.com

AL 1312

FOOD

Fresh and seasonal ingredients abound in the recipes from The Vibrant Table: Recipes from My Always Vegetarian, Mostly Vegan, and Sometimes Raw

Kitchen by Anya Kassoff (Roost Books, 2014).

V E G E T A R I A N R E C I P E S F O R A H E A L T H Y L I F E S T Y L EHomage to Nourishment

text: ANYA KASSOFF photography: MASHA DAVYDOVA

cooking instructions:

1. Drain the tofu, and place it on a plate. Cover with another plate, and put some weight on it, such as a glass jar filled with water. Let it drain for about 2 hours.

2. In a medium bowl, mix the citrus juices, cardamom, red pepper flakes, coconut sugar, olive oil, and salt. Pour into a food processor, add the cilantro and water, and pulse to incorporate. Reserve ½ cup of the dressing for later. 3. Pour away the water drained from the tofu. In a medium dish, crumble the tofu with your fingers. Pour the remaining dressing over the tofu, and leave to marinate for 30 minutes to 1 hour. (You can do these steps in advance and marinate the tofu overnight.) 4. Preheat the oven to 425°F. 5. Blanch the broccolini in a large pot full of well-salted water for 4 to 5 minutes. Transfer to an ice-water bath to stop the cooking. Remove the broccolini from the water once cool, squeeze out the excess water, and pat dry with paper towels. 6. Place the broccolini in a lightly oiled baking dish, drizzle the reserved ½ cup of dressing over it, and top with marinated tofu. Bake for 10 minutes. 7. Sprinkle with the toasted and chopped almonds, and serve immediately.

1 package (14 ounces) firm tofu 1 bunch (about 10 ounces) broccolini

For the marinade Juice and zest of 2 limes

Juice and zest of 1 lemon Seeds of 7 cardamom pods, crushed in a mortar

and pestle 1/8 teaspoon red pepper flakes

2 tablespoons coconut sugar 4 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for greasing

the baking dish ¼ teaspoon sea salt

1 bunch cilantro, leaves and stems (about 1 cup) 1 tablespoon purified water

Handful almonds, toasted and chopped

ingredients:

I love cooking with tofu, as its texture and ability to absorb any flavor allow

so much creativity in the kitchen. The flavor of this marinade is

sensational—the combination of cardamom and citrus is vibrant and

sunny, perfect for a summer meal.

citrus broccolini with cardamom tofu S E R V E S 4

From The Vibrant Table by Anya Kassoff, © 2014. Photographs by Masha Davydova. Reprinted by arrangement with Roost Books, an imprint of Shambhala Publications Inc., Boston, MA. www.roostbooks.com

AL 1514


1. Blanch the green beans in a pot of well-salted boiling water for about 4 minutes, until crisp-tender, and shock them in an ice-water bath. In the same water, blanch the peas for about 20 seconds, until crisp-tender, and shock them in the ice water. Remove the vegetables from the ice water when cool, and gently dry them with a dish towel or paper towels.

2. In a large bowl, combine the green beans, peas, carrot, radicchio, radishes, zest of the lemon, parsley, and dill. 3. In a mortar and pestle or coffee grinder, coarsely grind the coriander, cumin, mustard, and fenugreek seeds. Heat the olive oil in a small skillet over medium-low heat, add the crushed seeds and garlic, and cook for 2 to 3 minutes, until fragrant. Pour the hot oil over the salad, season with salt, and add a generous squeeze of lemon juice. Mix gently, add the berries, if using, and serve immediately.

Sea salt About 10 ounces young green beans or French

beans, ends trimmed About 6 ounces fresh shelled green peas

1 small carrot, shaved with a vegetable peeler 1 small head radicchio, thinly sliced

About 10 radishes, thinly sliced Zest and juice of 1 lemon

3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley 3 tablespoons chopped fresh dill

2 teaspoons whole coriander seeds 1 teaspoon whole cumin seeds

1 teaspoon whole yellow mustard seeds ½ teaspoon whole fenugreek seeds (optional)

2 tablespoons olive oil 1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed with a knife

Handful of berries, such as cherries and raspberries (optional)

ingredients:

When I first made this salad, it was nothing more than an attempt to put

together the produce I had on hand into one meal. It turned out so well

that everyone who tried it declared it was one of the best salads they’d ever had. I don’t think anyone has changed

their mind since.

summer bounty salad S E R V E S 4 - 6

AL 1716


1. Warm ½ tablespoon of the olive oil in a small sauté pan over medium-low heat. Add the onion and garlic, and sauté for 4 to 5 minutes, until translucent. Set aside to cool.

2. Preheat the oven to 400°F.

3. Wrap the shredded butternut squash in several layers of paper towels, and squeeze gently so the paper towels can absorb the excess liquid. Remove the paper towels, and place the squash in a medium bowl with the egg, salt, pepper, sage, parsley, paprika, nutmeg, cheese, and hazelnut flour. Add the onion and garlic, and mix to combine. 4. Line a baking sheet with lightly oiled parchment paper. With your hands, shape the squash mixture into patties, and arrange them on the baking sheet about 1½ inches apart. If the batter doesn’t stick together or is too wet, add a little more flour. Brush the patties with half of the remaining olive oil, and bake for 10 minutes. 5. Remove the sheet from the oven, and flip the patties using a thin spatula. Brush the other side of the patties with the remaining olive oil, and bake for another 10 minutes. Serve with sour cream or yogurt, and/or a simple green salad on the side.

1½ tablespoons olive oil, divided ½ medium yellow onion, finely chopped

1 large garlic clove, minced 2 cups packed finely shredded butternut squash

1 large egg Large pinch of sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper 1½ tablespoons minced fresh sage (from about

5 sage leaves) 1 tablespoon minced fresh flat-leaf parsley

¼ teaspoon smoked paprika Dash of freshly grated nutmeg

1½ ounces feta cheese, preferably goat’s milk and/or sheep’s milk feta, crumbled

½ cup hazelnut flour or almond flour

ingredients:

I have a deep fondness for vegetable pancakes or fritters; they were one of the

tastiest and simplest meals of my childhood. My mother made them with

zucchini in summer and pumpkin in fall and winter. To make them with zucchini, just squeeze out the excess water, eliminate the

sage and nutmeg, add 1 tablespoon each minced mint and dill, and use almond flour

rather than hazelnut flour.

butternut squash and sage fritters M A K E S 1 2

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1. Place the dates in a medium bowl, and cover with purified water. Let them soak while you follow the next few steps. Make sure your dates are very fresh, soft, and moist; if they’re not, soak them for several hours. 2. Preheat the oven to 350°F. 3. Spread the walnuts and hazelnuts on a baking sheet, place it in the oven, and toast the nuts for 10 minutes. Remove from the oven, and let cool. Meanwhile, spread the sunflower seeds on a separate baking sheet, and toast them for 5 minutes. Remove from the oven, and let cool. Rub the toasted walnuts and hazelnuts with a kitchen towel to remove their skins. 4. Pulse the rolled oats in a food processor to partially grind them, about 10 pulses. Transfer into a large bowl. Add the walnuts, hazelnuts, sunflower seeds, Brazil nuts, and salt to the food processor, and grind to the consistency of breadcrumbs. Drain the dates, remove the pits, and add to the nut mixture in the food processor, along with the maca powder, if using, the coconut butter, and tahini. Grind until well combined and as smooth as possible. 5. Add the remaining ingredients to the large bowl with the rolled oats, followed by the nut-date mixture. Using your hands, combine everything very well. The mixture should be sticky and hold together when pressed between your fingers. 6. Line an 8-by-8-inch baking pan with parchment paper extending up the sides. Press the mixture into the pan in an even layer, and freeze for 1 hour. Remove the pan from the freezer, lift the halva out with the parchment paper, and place the halva on a cutting board. Carefully slice it into bars with a large, sharp knife. It will keep refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 3 weeks. You can also store the bars in the freezer; they don’t harden completely, so you can eat them straight from the freezer.

5 large soft dates1 cup raw walnuts

1 cup raw hazelnuts½ cup raw sunflower seeds

½ cup rolled oats½ cup raw Brazil nuts

Pinch of sea salt2 tablespoons maca powder (optional)

3 tablespoons coconut butter or coconut oil2 tablespoons sesame tahini

¼ cup pumpkin seeds¼ cup unhulled or hulled raw sesame seeds

¼ cup hemp seeds¼ cup chia seeds

2 tablespoons quinoa puffs1/3 cup goji berries

1 heaping tablespoon cacao nibs½ tablespoon bee pollen

3 tablespoons honey

ingredients:

Halva is one of my favorite desserts. Whenever I see those irregularly

shaped blocks of nuts and sugar at Middle Eastern markets, I lose all

willpower. I can’t ever pick just one kind—sesame, sunflower, pistachio—they are all delicious in their own way. It’s no surprise that I wanted to create

a healthier alternative so I wouldn’t feel a sugar overload after every burst

of indulgence.

everythinghalva M A K E S 2 4 S M A L L B A R S

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GARDENING

Garden Apothecary founder Jennifer Lee Segale has made organic gardening and design her life’s work, including a bath and body product line.

A N O R G A N I C H O R T I C U L T U R I S T ’ S T A L E text: JENNIFER LEE SEGALE photography: ROB CO

California Greening

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE VIBE OF

HALF MOON BAY?

Half Moon Bay, California, is a chill coastal town, deeply rooted in an agricultural com-munity. I can walk to the beach and coastal bluff, and I can look out my window and see horses, cows, and a tractor pulling hay. Our biggest crops here are artichokes, pumpkins, and brussel sprouts, so there are always great fresh vegetables here. It’s heaven!

WHAT CONSTITUTES ORGANIC

LANDSCAPE DESIGN?

Organic landscape design is when you de-sign and implement a garden, using organic practices. I grow my own plants organically, and buy from organically certified compa-nies. I fertilize with compost that is certi-fied organic. When I design a garden, I am sure to study the natural habitat and climate before we come in and work with it. I look for a shady, soggy area on the property, and plant accordingly. I plant drought-tolerant as

much as possible. I also work with my clients long after to maintain their landscapes so the gardens stay chemical-free, sustainable, and beautiful!

WHAT KIND OF SCHOOLING IS

INVOLVED TO BECOME A

PROFESSIONAL HORTICULTURIST?

Like a lot of professions, horticulture can be self-taught hands-on or by going to school and getting a degree or degrees. I have done all of the above, but I find that nothing is a better teacher of nature than nature. My fa-vorite quote is, “Study nature, not books.”

WHAT ARE YOUR IDEAL CIRCUMSTANCES

TO WORK WITH?

My favorite jobs are when I work privately with most or all of the creative freedom. I like to see inside a person’s home or office to get a sense of their taste and color choices, but oth-er than that, my job is to design with the land. One job that I maintain each month (in San Francisco, California) is located near the bay, so we deal with a lot of salt, wind, and sun. We have a beautiful layer of native perenni-als, shrubs, and trees, and every few months, I plant containers around their house to hold the high-flowering annuals. We have a lovely patchwork mix of sustainable natives, as well as pockets of color and texture.

DO YOU HAVE A DREAM PROJECT?

My dream job is to work on an estate where I can plant hillsides of lavender. How gor-geous would 1,000 lavender plants in full bloom look each summer? I’d love to be on a property that had some history and some es-tablished trees, as well as areas for transition and new plantings. Masses of lavender always intrigue me. Vegetable gardens are always fun to install too.

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I READ THAT YOU RAISE BEES. HOW DID

YOU GET INVOLVED IN THAT?

I do raise honeybees. I have just a small hive (less than 20,000 bees) in my back garden, close to where I make my organic bath and beauty products. From my office, I can hear the buzzing! I wanted to work with bees be-cause of the amazing beneficial properties of honey. I also wanted to help support our lo-cal bee colonies, and add biodiversity to my garden and neighborhood.

DO YOU TAKE CARE OF OTHER ANIMALS?

I have four rescue mutts from various rescue organizations —Sprout, Patootie, Lucky, and Whiskey. They are all adorable, and a giant pain in the rear! They each have a different, entertaining personality, so they always keep me on my toes!

I also own chickens, though they don’t have special names; I call them all Mama. They are sweet little pets, but we mostly have them for egg production. I have four chickens, so we (pretty regularly) get four eggs a day. My friends and neighbors reap the benefits, and I always have eggs on hand for cookie making.

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO LAUNCH

GARDEN APOTHECARY?

I was inspired to start Garden Apothecary about six years ago. My sister and I were walking through the Ferry Building Farmers’ Market in San Francisco, and I saw a plethora of bath products, but none were organic or all that interesting. I decided it would be fun to make products for the body from the plants I knew and loved and researched. Plus, it was a perk to be able to get dirty from one company (my landscaping) and clean up with another! My cacao body scrub was created for getting

the dirt out from under my nails after gar-dening, but it’s ended up being fabulous for so much more!

DID YOU HAVE WILLING FRIENDS TO TEST

YOUR PRODUCTS?

Early on, I made my products in my kitchen and did a lot of family and friend testing! It really started as something indulgent for myself and a few close friends. But after a holiday season of everyone wanting some, I decided to turn it into a business. It was off to the races from there! I noticed a hole in the beauty market, as none of the products I could find had actual plants or flowers in them—just oils and chemicals. I find that Garden Apothecary’s best sellers and most indulgent products are the ones I add a lot of botanicals to, like our vanilla and balsam scrub that includes one whole organic vanilla bean in the jar.

DID YOU ALSO CREATE YOUR OWN LABELS

AND PACKAGING?

I created all of my labels and packaging. It’s been a painstaking process that took me about two years, but I love the outcome and find the labels to be very fitting for the prod-ucts and my brand. I work with a designer and printing company who I give my ideas to. They make sure it’s printable, and constantly help with my perennial grammar issues!

WHERE DID YOUR LOVE OF TRAVEL

STEM FROM?

My love for travel came when I met my hus-band, Matt. He has always been a constant traveler, and after we took our first month-long trip, I was hooked. If I don’t make it to Belize a couple times a year, I get pretty antsy. I tend to tailor my trips around what

type of plant research I can do in whatever country we are traveling to. Belize is perfect since Matt loves to scuba dive while I am trekking in the jungle. I’d say that is where we have had our best memories—jump-ing off waterfalls, cave exploration, rid-ing horses in a mahogany farm, and eating great local foods at the Belizean farmers’ markets. My favorite times are just driving for hours down the Hummingbird High-way in Belize and listening to our favorite podcasts. We speed by the beautiful land-scape, stop whenever there is something in-teresting to see, and enjoy our time together.

FAVORITE PRODUCT:

It’s tough to have favorites since I handcraft each product, but if I had to choose, it would be our cacao and cardamom oil. It’s a rich, grounding scent that feels luxurious on the body; it’s our best-selling item.

WHAT IS CAPTURING YOUR ATTENTION

THESE DAYS?

Right now, I have been doing a lot of hands-on studying of theobroma cacao. This is the namesake of chocolate. It’s a small, tropical tree that loves to grow in the under-brush in jungles. The pods are large, almost

football shaped. The taste and scent from the beans is incredible—even magical. It’s found to have a tremendous amount of antioxidants and other medicinal properties for the body, mind, and spirit. AL :: www.gardenapothecary.com

My dream job is to work on an estate where I can plant hillsides of lavender. How gorgeous would 1,000 lavender plants in full bloom look each summer?

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ART

Artist Michael Ward paints to document and bear witness to life, and chooses subjects often overlooked to force people to see.

T H E A R T I N T H E O R D I N A R Y text: MICHAEL WARD paintings: MICHAEL WARD

Painting the Pedestrian

TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF AND YOUR

JOURNEY AS AN ARTIST:

I’d like to say I knew from an early age I wanted to be an artist, but that’s not quite the case. In my youth, I wanted to be an architect, and got as far as studying architecture in high school before diverting into creative writing in college. In 1974, I spent a summer with my cousin in Maine, who put me to work doing pen and ink sketches of houses for friends. I earned $15 a drawing, and by summer’s end, I had a couple hundred bucks in my pocket. That led me to do more pen and ink draw-ings of historic architecture, which abounds in Maine.

Back home in Long Beach, California, I went searching for more historical buildings to draw. Pickings were slim, but in the course of my wanderings, I photographed whatever caught my eye, old and new. I was friends with a couple professional photographers, who encouraged my amateur efforts. In the early ’80s, I tried painting some of these. I used gouache on illustration board, just because that’s what I had on hand from my day job as a graphic artist. The results were encouraging, and I even managed to sell a painting (Pink Elephant) for a modest price.

DID YOUR CAREER TAKE OFF FROM THERE?

I got distracted with a girlfriend (later wife) and stepson, and put my brushes down for a decade or so. I regretted selling Pink El-ephant, and one day decided to get it back by painting it again. Then I painted another work and another, and haven’t stopped since. I draw from my now-ancient archive of slides from the ’70s and ’80s, and more recent im-ages as well.

I went along the typical amateur path, show-ing in community art shows and county fairs, gradually climbing the emerging artist ladder to group shows at galleries, then a solo show in 2008, and then gallery representation and more group and solo shows. Though I still have a day job, painting occupies more and more of my time.

AS AN ARTIST, WHAT IS YOUR MOTIVATION

FOR CREATING?

For me, painting is about bearing witness. It’s about documenting the life I live and have lived, the places I’ve been, and the sights I have seen. I concentrate on what is normally overlooked: the everyday, the com-monplace, the stuff we take for granted. Alan Watts calls it, “The mystery of the ordinary.”

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I believe there is a grace in everyday things that we usually overlook. My paintings are a way of making people pay attention to what’s around them. My hope is that people look at my paintings and see something of their own experience in them, and that prompts them to look at something they’ve never seen be-fore and say, “I know this.”

HOW HAS YOUR ART EVOLVED OVER

THE YEARS?

In the early days, I was copying my photo-graphs exactly, only leaving out stuff that was too complex to paint. At some point, I began adding figures to images that needed them, or other elements such as cars or trees. And I might change the color of a building or re-position things for the sake of composition. I have dabbled with wholly fictional scenes, but always come back to a more documen-tary approach. Over the years, I’ve learned to become braver in cropping tighter and mak-ing changes for the sake of composition. So I’m probably somewhere between documen-tary and reality TV.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR WORK?

In art historical terms, you’d probably call what I do photorealism. I’d be happy just calling it realism. The paintings look photo-graphic to the untrained eye, but my level of detail is not as great as some. And though I sometimes wish it were looser, it never quite gets to an impressionist level. A curator once described my work as “abstract realism.” That may explain my affinity for Richard Dieben-korn. My fascination with the ordinary might put me in the Ashcan School, though it would have to be updated to the Plastic Recycling Bin School.

WHEN IT COMES TO YOUR WORK, ARE

THERE ANY BOUNDARIES THAT YOU ARE

NOT AFRAID OF CROSSING?

If there are any boundaries, they are ones I’ve set myself. I shy away from painting “pretty” pictures—touristy scenes, flowers, pets, car-ousel horses, etc. (though I have done all of those at some point, and they’ve been well received). But I would rather not paint the stuff that’s already been painted over and over. There is so much in the world that is overlooked—I feel a duty to document it.

TALK US THROUGH THE PROCESS OF

CREATING YOUR AVERAGE WORK OF ART:

I start by picking an image from my archive, either a slide from the ’70s or ’80s, or a digital shot from this century. I crop it in Photoshop, and do any necessary editing—removing or adding elements, moving stuff around, modi-fying colors. Then I make a full-size printout that gets traced onto the canvas. I work back to front, and top to bottom. A small piece takes a couple weeks, working two to three hours a day. A more complex piece may take two months. One painting took me a year, but that was in my early days when I was slower and less devoted to painting. I generally don’t varnish my paintings, so when the last detail is painted, they’re done.

WHAT INSPIRES THE SUBJECT MATTER OF

YOUR ART?

I’m always looking for subject matter, but it’s hard to articulate exactly what I’m looking for. It usually boils down to, “I know it when I see it.” People sometimes send me images they think could be Michael Ward paintings.

I concentrate on what is normally overlooked: the everyday, the

commonplace, the stuff we take for granted. Alan Watts calls it, “The mystery of the ordinary.”

I believe there is a grace in everyday things that we

usually overlook.

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They may be way off base, but sometimes they’re right on. That’s satisfying—to know that other people share my aesthetic.

WHERE ARE SOME OF YOUR FAVORITE

PLACES TO DRAW INSPIRATION FROM?

Museums are always energizing for me, as is the study of other artists in general. And travel, of course. Lately, I’ve been traveling repeatedly to the same places (because of family): Montana, Michigan, and Mexico. I’ve gotten a lot of material from all of them.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ASPECT OF THE

CREATIVE PROCESS?

I like the entire process: finding an image, preparing it for the canvas, and executing the work. I guess a favorite aspect for me is find-ing the unexpected and overlooked details in an image as I paint it. For instance, I found a slide in my archive that had a girl leaning against a light pole at an odd angle. When I began painting, I noticed she was wearing roller skates, so that painting became Rollin’ Down Pico after the location, Pico and West-ern in Los Angeles. Another image I painted contained a bank building in downtown Long Beach built in the twenties; a couple of old cars appear in the slide I took in the 1970s, and an elderly woman in the foreground is clutching her sack lunch. That became the painting called Persistence.

In art historical terms, you’d probably call what I do photorealism. I’d be happy just calling it realism. The paintings look photographic to the untrained eye, but my level of detail is not as great as some.

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My most recent revelation came when I did a painting of a VW bug parked outside an art deco apartment building, based on a slide I took back in the 1970s. I discovered that the VW had snow tires, not usually needed in Southern California. The VW was a 1968 model, the same one my father had when he left Montana in the 1960s to reset-tle in Long Beach. So there was a personal symbolism for me, though I didn’t realize it when I took the photo or started the painting. These themes often only present themselves after hours of study, which painting allows me to do.

HOW WOULD YOU SAY YOUR ART DIFFERS

FROM OTHER CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS?

I’m self-taught, so I haven’t been influenced much by art schools or art trends. I don’t feel the need to express any inner demons. I don’t think I’m consciously emulating anyone, though there are many contemporary artists I admire, such as Robert Bechtle, Richard Es-tes, Ralph Goings, and John Register.

HOW DO YOU CONTINUE TO CHALLENGE

YOURSELF AS AN ARTIST?

For a long time, I resisted doing commis-sions, though I’m often asked to do them. Somehow, it seems too much like work. But lately, I’ve been more open, as commissions often take me in directions I would not oth-erwise have gone. And as my skills improve, I have tackled images that I once considered too hard to paint.

Lately, I’ve tried to include more people in my paintings, which often means combining images. Having a person in a scene changes the dynamic entirely.

WHAT HAVE BEEN THE MOST VALUABLE

LESSONS LEARNED?

It took me a long time to realize that if some-thing didn’t come out right, I could repaint it. That has freed me up, which means I can paint faster. There’s no pressure to get it right the first time. Another thing I’ve learned is that often a composition can be improved by cropping the original image. I found this out more or less by accident while trying to fit the image of one of my paintings onto a business card.

DESCRIBE FOR US THE ATMOSPHERE WHEN

YOU ARE AT WORK:

I can paint anywhere, and have, but I have a purpose-built studio attached to my house where I do most of my painting. My cat, Milo, keeps me company, and I listen to podcasts (mostly current affairs programs) to engage that part of my brain not engaged in painting.

TALK ABOUT YOUR LIFE OUTSIDE OF

YOUR WORK:

There’s travel, reading, taking care of cats, and being a graphic designer. But I’m always thinking about painting—whether it is the project I’m working on at the moment or what I want to paint next.

WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE IN

TEN YEARS?

I’d like to still be above ground, painting full time in some picturesque location (or sev-eral), reluctantly jetting off for the occasional museum retrospective.

TALK ABOUT THE WALKABOUT SERIES:

These paintings are from my 2008 solo show, with ongoing additions. They are all city scenes, based on photographs taken while roaming the streets of Long Beach,

Los Angeles, and Orange County. Just as a walkabout is a coming of age, these paintings represent my ongoing journey of discovery and maturation as an artist, and simultane-ously, my examination in detail of where I’ve been, and by extension, who I was and who I have become.

TALK ABOUT THE HOME IS WHERE THE

HOUSE IS SERIES:

I am currently working on a series of paint-ings of simple, ordinary houses—ones with-out grand architectural pretensions. Rather, their importance derives from the lives lived within them, of which we see very little. The paintings are all of a common size, four-teen inches by eighteen inches. The houses are from a variety of locations in the United States and Mexico. They are, in a sense, the places we all grew up in—places of nurture, experience, trial, memory, and forgiveness. AL :: www.tmichaelward.com

IT TOOK ME A LONG TIME TO REALIZE THAT IF SOMETHING DIDN’T COME OUT RIGHT, I could repaint it. That has freed me up, which means I can paint faster.

There’s no pressure to get it right the first time.

“

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DESIGNWAS THERE A DISTINCT MOMENT THAT

HELPED DETERMINE YOUR PASSION

FOR ARCHITECTURE?

I don’t think there was a specific moment. There was nothing so glorious as getting hit in the head with an apple and coming up with a theory. I was always interested in tin-kering and building with things, and had re-ally liked being around construction as I was growing up.

I played football while attending an Ivy League college to earn a liberal arts degree. I pursued a pretty well-rounded degree be-cause I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do—at that time, my mind-set was fixated on pretending that I might be able to play pro-fessional football in the future. I started out studying engineering, but found that I was more interested in putting things together and seeing how they were modeled rather than learning about how things stressed. So I ended up becoming a visual arts major, which I excelled at but wasn’t focused on.

Although I did end up getting signed by a professional football team, I got cut fairly quickly. Returning home, I took a job as a do-everything gofer with an architecture firm, just to see if I would like it, and coached football for a high school team. Through that experience, I was offered a couple teaching positions from a local high school; however, I decided to follow my father’s advice and attend graduate school before jumping into a teaching position. I applied and got into graduate school to study architecture, and it became my passion.

WHAT ABOUT ARCHITECTURE WERE YOU

DRAWN TO?

I think it was the ability to make functional artwork with my hands. There were reasons to do things a certain way, whereas art was too wide open for me. There was context with architecture, like wind, sun, and landscape. There were buildings next door and views to take into account. All of these variables had to be considered and integrated in order to create a story or an experience as you move through the space.

James Rill’s architecture is informed by the environment, integrating outdoor elements into the design of the home.

B U I L D I N G A M O N G T H E T R E E SInto the Woods

text: JAMES RILL photography: JAMES RAY SPAHN

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR

DESIGN AESTHETIC?

Naturesque, which to me means it responds to its environment. It brings nature into the house and the house out into the natural en-vironment. Our firm dedicates itself to cre-ating spaces that are connected to the views and vistas of the outdoors. Every house you design creates outdoor rooms as well, and the outdoor rooms are some of the most wonder-ful rooms in the house. Our clients really like to feel connected to nature while they are in-side their home, but they also like to feel that they are not all alone when outside.

HOW DOES LOCATION TRANSLATE INTO

INSPIRATION FOR A HOME’S DESIGN?

The environment around you provides con-text, which includes factors like the views, the sun, the wind, the trees, and the terrain. There are next-door neighbors, backdoor neighbors, and front-door neighbors. There is streetscape. All of these elements play into how you respond and how you begin the pro-cess. You need to know all the pieces so you can incorporate it into your design.

The other context is the client. Our clients have a lot to say about what they want in their homes. We want to base our design off of how they live, and not how I live or anyone in our firm lives since we are not the people who are going to live in the project. We find out what-ever their needs and wishes are and incorpo-rate those into our plan as we are designing a project. If you came to us with your house, we would ask questions like, “How do you enter-tain? Who wakes up first? How much space do you have for your closets? Who cooks?” These are a lot of personal questions. By tak-ing your cues from the site and the clients, every project you work on is different—every site is different, every personality is differ-ent—so it never gets old.

ONCE YOU’VE SELECTED A DIRECTION FOR

THE DESIGN, WHAT IS YOUR PLANNING

PROCESS LIKE?

It is always evolving. There is no selection to the design. There is something called a parti, which is a French word for an organizing ele-ment from an architectural standpoint. You begin by creating organizing elements that are reviewed with your clients and reviewed by your staff. And you pull together how you want to expand the project. From that point, you start designing the details, and you re-view it again with your clients and staff ev-ery couple of weeks. You keep pushing along in baby steps until you get something that is morphing into a design that is physically

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beautiful and functionally beautiful, but not constructable at this point. These are not con-struction drawings, but rather drawings that give you a sense of what the design is.

At that point, you take it to general contrac-tors for pricing because you want to make sure you are not building the Taj Mahal when you don’t have a Taj Mahal budget. All ar-chitects are accused of going overbudget. It’s crucial to find out the budget early so you can modify and tailor the project to meet your fi-nancial and aesthetic needs. There are ways to design and masterplan, get some pricing, get a shopping list, and then tailor it to meet your needs, budgetwise.

YOUR FAVORITE ARCHITECTURE SECRET:

There is no real secret. We spend a lot of time thinking about natural light. I think one of the biggest things we do differently from oth-ers is we design the house as if it owns every-thing it can see. If you have a five-acre site, we are designing a five-acre project, although the house may be only 3,000 square feet. There will be trails, gazebos, and outdoor rooms. We think of the entire site as the project. We help with the landscape architecture, and we also work all the way to the interiors where we’ll coordinate to design the kitchen cabi-nets, the built-ins, and everything up to the furniture and fabrics—which we can coordi-nate as well if you want us to. I think our se-cret is that we are not just thinking about the house as a structure. We are thinking about it as a home.

GIVE US AN OVERVIEW OF THIS

PARTICULAR PROJECT. WHAT WAS YOUR

CLIENT LOOKING FOR IN TERMS OF

AESTHETIC AND FEELING OF THE SPACE?

The clients were looking for a place to live within nature so they could experience na-ture both from within the house and from outside the house. If the husband had his way, he would have pitched a tent on the property

or hollowed out a log and lived in that. But the wife insisted on including the amenities of modern-day lifestyles.

They wanted their house to sit within the context of the neighborhood from an archi-tectural standpoint—they didn’t want it to be so rustic that it didn’t fit with the other houses in the neighborhood—but they also wanted it to sit on the site as a piece of the landscape. They wanted the design to be a little more sleek, clean, and made of glass, stone, and wood so that it appeared to grow out of the landscape.

DESCRIBE THE LOCATION BEFORE

YOU BEGAN:

It was on a steep slope in the middle of the woods with vistas toward valleys and river valleys. The houses on each side were con-temporary in nature, and the neighborhood as a whole was more English traditional. It was a wonderful site. There was nobody be-hind you for miles that you could see, and you could easily screen out your neighbors to the sides.

SUM UP THE THEME AND INSPIRATION

BEHIND THIS PROJECT IN A COUPLE OF

SENTENCES:

Live within your surroundings without hav-ing an adverse affect on the surroundings. Influence the site versus ripping it apart and disturbing it.

HOW DID YOU NAVIGATE THROUGH

NATURE TO ACHIEVE YOUR DESIGN?

WHAT SORT OF CHALLENGES DID THE

LANDSCAPE PROVIDE?

We chose to work with the surrounding mate-rials so that the house didn’t appear like an ob-ject in the landscape, but rather it blended in with the green of nature. We relocated moun-tain laurels, which we were advised not to do but were successful at anyway. We worked with the existing positioning of the trees,

taking down as few as possible and spending lot of money saving the ones that were tight to the house. When we did have to take down a tree, we would utilize the wood within the construction materials so that nothing was wasted. You will notice that some of the trees are actually used as the wood floors in the house.

TELL US ABOUT THIS HOUSE IN

GENERAL TERMS:

It is a four-story, 4,200-square-foot house. The lower level consists of an indoor pool, which opens up to nature as well as a guest room, workout room, and rec room. The first floor is the living, eating, and cooking space,

and also boasts a glass room which is ideal for sitting in the environment and looking out at the nature that passes by. On the second floor, there is the master bedroom and anoth-er bedroom. And on the third floor, there is an office and a bird sanctuary for the owner’s parakeets. When the client walks around up there, the birds perch on his shoulders, so we had to make sure the materials up there took care of themselves. If you notice on the front of the house, the dormers are made of glass. We treated the dormers as hatches; when you are standing inside a dormer, you feel like you have lifted up the hatches of the roof and are looking around in all directions.

EXPLAIN SOME OF THE ECO-FRIENDLY

DESIGN MATERIALS, SYSTEMS, AND

BUILDING TECHNIQUES USED IN

THIS PROJECT:

We put a lot of thought into living green and living within your environment. The main features were the insulation, the indoor air quality, and the hot water heat that runs from a geothermal system. We utilized Icy-nene spray foam insulation, duel flush toi-lets, and ENERGY STAR appliances. We also incorporated cisterns, which take the water from the roof and the site and filter it into two ten-thousand-gallon tanks for irrigation.

The client was looking for a place to live within nature so they could experience nature both from within the house and from outside the house.

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WHAT SORT OF DESIGN DETAILS CAN BE

FOUND IN THE HOME’S INTERIORS?

The interior of the house is made up of all exposed timbers and wood, which plays on the idea that the trees and limbs have moved into the house. We really focused on using these timbers and wood as a way to relate to the same timbers and wood in nature, but utilizing them as structure. The ex-posed wood creates a textured and organic design, even though the lines are clean and straight. The walls are mostly floor-to- ceiling glass to allow for wonderful views. The marble granite that we used for the kitch-en emulated a force like you were looking up through the trees.

WHAT IS THE AVERAGE TIMEFRAME FOR

A PROJECT?

It takes about a year to design, and a little over a year to build. You can design it in six months, but it would be stressful. It is a very hard question to answer because every proj-ect is different. Depending on the size of the project, it can be six to eight months for an addition, or twelve to sixteen months for a new home. If you are building on a ninety-degree slope, it is a lot harder to build. Every project is different.

HOW DID THE CLIENTS REACT TO THE

FINAL DESIGN?

Our clients are very involved in the early stages, the middle stages, and again when it is done. Some are pleasantly surprised with the beginning siting, confused with the con-struction, and then pleasantly surprised that it comes out as wonderful as we planned for in the end. Envisioning the project when it is done is a little tough, and people end up thinking that rooms are too small or too big during the construction phase. But the final results are worth it in the end. There is some trust there, but we do bring them along with every step. In general, I think our clients expect to be wowed when it is done. In this

particular case, the clients were ecstatic with the final results. They helped design it and loved every detail because it is personal to them—from the kitchen pantry fit for a gour-met cook to the garage’s special fittings to hold up kayaks and bikes.

HOW DO YOU CONTINUE TO CHALLENGE

YOURSELF AS AN ARCHITECT?

Every project is different, and every client is different—that is what keeps us on our toes. The sites themselves are always different, as are the budgets. Everybody has a budget and a wish list, and 100 percent of the time, the wish list is more than what the budget allows. It doesn’t matter the number. If you have two dollars in your pocket, you will want three dollars worth of architecture. If you have one million dollars in your pocket, you will want 1.5 million dollars worth of architecture. Each project comes with its own set of pa-rameters that keeps things interesting.

WHAT DO YOU FIND TO BE MOST

FULFILLING ABOUT THE FIELD?

The fact that we are doing something that will last forever (in our opinion). We are molding the environment—our environment, yours and mine—into something wonderful that will stay there for a long time. We are creating something, and making somebody’s dream come true. When we drive by, we can enjoy

the satisfaction of being able to say that we had a little something to do with its creation. That is how our clients feel too. They are do-ing this because they love it. They are doing something for the future, but for their own satisfaction and simplicity in life too.

SHED SOME LIGHT ON YOURSELF OUTSIDE

OF THE DESIGN WORLD:

I coach Special Olympics basketball and soft-ball. That is out of the fact that my youngest son, who is twenty years old, has special needs. He is very athletic, and I like that. I played sports my entire life, and I like to continue to work out, swim, run, and bike. I also find that running an office is much like running a great team, which I find to be enjoyable. Although architecture isn’t an inherently team-oriented process, I really preach the teamwork. A lot of architects think of themselves singularly; there are a lot of Frank Lloyd Wrights of the world who think that they did it all and do not need any help. But our philosophy in this firm focuses on being very team-oriented. I constantly look for advice and people to inspire me. I also like to inspire others. For that reason, I really like coaching in the off-season and working with kids who have special needs.AL :: www.rillarchitects.com

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CRAFT

Craftsman Tony Davis transforms Kentucky bourbon barrels into useful household items, like cutting boards, lazy Susans, and art easels.

T H E A R T O F S A L VA G I N G O A Ktext: BRADLEY D. SAUM photography: BRADLEY D. SAUM

Bourbon with a TwistTHE MASTER DISTILLER EYES THE CHARRED

oak barrels carefully year after year, anticipat-ing just the right maturity to produce the full essence and classic amber tone of top-shelf bourbon. Craftsman Tony Davis has his eyes on those same barrels, but not for the bour-bon. Tony seeks the perfectly seasoned wood barrels to succumb to his creative hands. The salvaged oak is crafted into functional art pieces for the home, such as cutting boards, lazy Susans, and art easels.

His unique designs start with the staves, the curved wood planks of the barrel that are bound tightly with metal bands. A grinder quickly relieves the tension of the band, free-ing the pieces of white oak. As the staves fall to the floor, the traditional charred in-terior is revealed. The grinding generates a blanket of soot throughout Tony’s Studio 300 in the old James Pepper Distillery in Lexington, Kentucky.

The very first staves that Tony Davis re-claimed from a bourbon barrel were not in his pursuit of crafting in Studio 300, but many years before when he was young and simply passing time in the Lexington, Ken-tucky, summers. The walls of Tony’s child-hood clubhouse were fortified with small wood planks pulled from trash cans behind a neighborhood store. Those discarded rem-nants were actually from bourbon barrels that had already been repurposed once as planters. “Little did I know I would be doing what I am doing now,” Tony reflects.

From the little clubhouse and his humble be-ginnings in Lexington, Tony would take a re-markable journey before picking up another piece of charred white oak from a bourbon barrel. Struggling to complete a formal edu-cation beyond the seventh grade, Tony started delivering papers and working at a fast food restaurant. In 1995, Tony joined the United States Marine Corps, which would take him

As the staves fall to the floor, the traditional

charred interior is revealed and generates a

blanket of soot throughout Tony’s

Studio 300 in the old James Pepper Distillery in Lexington, Kentucky.

40 AL 41

to eighteen countries around the world. He put his mind to studying and earned a GED, the equivalent of a high school diploma. “I al-ways wanted to do better for myself because of where I came from,” Tony conveyed. “If it were not for the Marine Corps, I would not be where I am today.

“The Marine Corps taught me discipline, integrity, and to be honest. It taught me ev-erything. I can never repay the Marine Corps for all they did for me,” Tony shared. “I hold them close to my heart.”

Tony also has the USMC to thank for indi-rectly introducing him to the art of repurpos-ing barrels. During the time he was briefly stationed at Camp Pendleton in California,

Tony enjoyed Fleet Week, including a tour of nearby Napa Valley wine country where he stumbled upon artisans crafting wine racks and decorative art pieces from the wine bar-rels. Tony tucked the experience into his memory while he was still busy serving his country, but found himself recalling the Napa Valley artwork during his occasional visits back home to the Bluegrass Region of Ken-tucky, when the mere sight of old bourbon barrels sent him down memory lane. Cre-ative ideas were subtly starting to form.

Tony’s journey came full circle as he eventu- ally landed back in Lexington after his service in the Marines. With the memory of the artisans still etched in his mind, he found himself frequently in his backyard barn,

crafting wine racks and art easels from old pieces of hand-hewn boards, but had dreams of one day creating something proprietary.

Tony’s moment of creative genius came while he was stuck in traffic in downtown Lex-ington, sitting in his truck looking at a sign for the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games. The World Equestrian Games would be held in Tony’s hometown, the first time the International Federation for Equestrian Sports would host the elite event at a venue outside of Europe. An idea illuminated. “I pondered what I could do for Kentucky that we already had that I could put a twist on,” recounted Tony as he wanted others to share in his enthusiasm for Kentucky. The inspira-tion for an art piece was kindled.

Returning home, he grabbed an old bourbon barrel that he had purchased at a garage sale some years earlier for no specific purpose. With newfound resolution, he cut the metal bands with his grinder, and the staves fell to the ground. As he was picking them up, he saw what could be made into a body and im-mediately knew. Kentucky Knows was in its infancy and would gradually develop into his signature art piece and registered trademark, as a slightly abstract character crafted to il-lustrate unique aspects of Kentucky.

He refined his vision with extensive research into the history of Kentucky, the bourbon in-dustry, and horse racing. “Kentucky Knows represents the icons of Kentucky,” Tony con-veyed as he proudly spoke of his home state.

The body of Kentucky Knows is, of course, staves from a bourbon barrel. The long corn “Knows”, a homonym play on nose, repre-sents the required minimum 51 percent corn content in bourbon. The Commonwealth of Kentucky joined fourteen other states in the recently formed Union in 1792, and that date rests prominently on the end of the corn nose.

The eyes are a story of their own. The little thoroughbreds sitting in the eyes are re-claimed bourbon bottle toppers from Blan-ton’s Single Barrel Bourbon. The eyes of Kentucky Knows are always facing to the left. (Anywhere horses race in the world, they gallop counterclockwise, thus the same for the horses that form the eyes of Kentucky

Knows.) Tony adds, “Kentucky Knows has vi-sions of a thoroughbred.

“He’s always been inside the bourbon barrel; it just took us to let him out,” Tony said in a nearly serious tone. Tony’s entrepreneurial drive was now inspired and in high gear. He wanted to use the bourbon barrels to create marketable items that would appeal to a wide audience, which led him to a cutting board.

Tony crafts all sorts of items from the staves of the bourbon barrel, but cutting boards are the foundation of the business. Initially there were several unsuccessful attempts to market the boards. But with his eternally pensive analysis, Tony said, “I have learned just as much from a no, as I have from a yes.”

AL 4342

The cutting boards are made from the head of the barrel; the individual pieces of wood are separated and then glued back together to ensure a solid working surface. The origi-nal distillery stamp along with artful char-ring added by Tony are thoroughly sealed with shellac approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in the kitchen. Some of his cutting boards are occasionally used to slice and dice, while many others simply re-main hanging on the wall as decor.

With the cutting boards fully crafted, he land-ed an interview with Brad Williams, Director of Merchandising for Liquor Barn, a chain of full service party stores. Tony remembers that day clearly: August 10, 2011. Tony and his four cutting boards made quite an im-pression, and a relationship was sparked. The first sixteen cutting boards he provided to Liquor Barn’s stores in the Hamburg area of Lexington sold out in the first week.

Kentucky Knows and cutting boards are not the only creations that have emerged from the bourbon barrels in Tony’s studio. There’s also a Bits-n-Barrel lazy Susan, a Shoes-n-Barrel lazy Susan, easels, bottle openers, and the lat-est addition, Grill-n-Char. In his optimistic manner, Tony said, “This little business has brought out the good in me. In my studio, I am able to be who I want to be as long as I do what’s right. It’s still a small business, but it’s really big to me.”

Back at the distillery, each barrel is deeply toasted and receives a light charring before the bourbon begins the aging process. Once Tony frees the thirty-two or thirty-three

staves from the ringed barrels, the first task is to scrape down that charred surface. The black soot seems to get nearly everywhere, even on Tony’s face. The little pieces of burnt white oak that have been soaked in bour-bon for many years, generate a unique flavor when smoked in a grill.

The bourbon barrel char delivers a flavor suited for all sorts of meats, fruits and vegeta-bles, and nearly anything you can put on the grill. About eight ounces of the char is placed in a foil tray and heated among the charcoal. Just before the cooking begins, splash a little apple juice on the char, and the grill is filled with a twist of traditional Kentucky flavor.

All of these handcrafted creations require a lot of bourbon, or rather the barrels that once held all that bourbon. Bourbon barrels are not necessarily easy to obtain, especially to use those with logos and propriety markings in a business venture.

Tony has forged a relationship with Buffalo Trace Distillery in Franklin County, Ken-tucky. In his humble manner, Tony has al-ways requested permission from Buffalo Trace prior to using their brand in any of his handcrafted items. Over the years, Tony has gained permission to use even the most cov-eted brands in the Buffalo Trace family, such as Elmer T. Lee and Blanton’s Single Barrel.

Every item remains crafted and personally judged by Tony before it goes to market. Well over a thousand, and possibly over two thousand, bourbon barrels will pass through his studio in Lexington this year. Nearly ev-ery one of those barrels will be from Buffalo Trace Distillery, based on a relationship that he treasures.

“How was I ever so blessed to work with these great labels?” Tony wonders aloud. “The peo-ple make the brand; the brand does not make the people.”

In the retired James Pepper Distillery, Tony can be found seven days a week pouring his passion into the oak barrels, surrounded by barrels, staves, heads, rings, sawdust, and soot. Elmer T. Lee, a legendary bourbon craftsman and longtime Master Distiller for Buffalo Trace, once walked the very same concrete floors as a production manager for the James Pepper Distillery, which was owned by Schenley Products, predecessors to the present day Buffalo Trace.

“I am promoting self-worth, not the bour-bon,” Tony states thoughtfully.

The artisan in Tony is often overshadowed by his motivation to succeed, but his terms of success are certainly not measured sim-ply by how many cutting boards he sells. It is apparent that Tony reflects on the path his life has followed, and provides insightful glimpses into his desire to be a cornerstone of inspiration for children, especially those that are struggling.

A photo of Tony when he was about ten years old in the kitchen of his childhood home, with his mother and two brothers, is front and center in his workshop. He shares how his clothes were provided by Catholic Chari-ties of Lexington, and speaks of opportuni-ties that were not readily available to him. It serves as a reminder of where he started.

“Nobody in my family has ever graduated high school to this day,” Tony shared. “I find it hard to believe I made it out of there.

It’s what you do with yourself that creates the story.”

Tony’s future goals are not founded in pro-ductivity, efficiency, or dollars. “I see myself as a community servant,” Tony declared. “Inspiring kids to do the right thing because what you do today will follow you. You can’t let the wrong thing inspire you.”

The desire to give back to his hometown is a constant thread in Tony’s conversation. “I want to be able to give back to the commu-nity,” Tony said. “Go into the inner city of Lexington, and show those kids to put heart into what they do and to stay honest. They can do what I did; I came from there.”

According to Tony, “It takes a lifetime to master your own life. Looking back on it, I’m starting to understand myself and my life. I know how I did it. It was passion.”AL :: www.kentuckyknows.com

According to Tony, “It takes a lifetime to master your own life. Looking back on it, I’m starting to understand myself and my life. I know how I did it. It was passion.”

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TRAVEL

Mike Eadie’s extroverted personality and love of people’s stories make him an ideal shop owner of a much-loved antiques store on Portland’s Couch Street.

H O O D O O A N T I Q U E S I N P O R T L A N D , O R E G O Ntext: MIKE EADIE photography: AS NOTED

Treasure on Couch Street

DID YOU GROW UP IN PORTLAND?

I grew up in Northern California and moved to Portland in 1993.

I was born on a Friday, the 13th, and it has always seemed that if pushed from an airplane, I would land in the forest with arrow points at my feet. Lucky.

WHAT WAS YOUR CAREER PRIOR TO

HOODOO ANTIQUES?

Prior to Hoodoo Antiques, I was a jack-of-all-trades in the perpetual pursuit of a music career. After being paid to play music, I quickly realized that this short life is far better lived following your bliss. Alas, a record deal was not in my cards, so I finished school.

WHERE DOES THE INTEREST IN ANTIQUES

COME FROM? WAS THERE SOMEONE IN

YOUR LIFE WHO INTRODUCED YOU

TO ANTIQUING?

My interest in antiques grew out of necessity and the appreciation of past value. As a student, I was able to furnish a rented house for pennies on the dollar with beautiful pieces that had lasted seventy-five to a hundred years. I’ve always preferred a timeless, one-of-a-kind, bullet-proof something to Swedish particle board. Design transcends time.

HOW DID THE IDEA OF HOODOO ANTIQUES

COME TO BE? HOW MANY YEARS WAS IT

AN IDEA BEFORE IT BECAME A REALITY?

I remember being dragged to my first garage sale after a brunch years ago in Pasadena. I looked down to see a 14 karat gold 1920s men’s Bulova wristwatch laying in an old coffee can for a quarter. It just needed winding. Two weeks later, I sold it to a Japanese antique dealer who offered me $200 cash while in the supermarket checkout line.

Treasure is out there, and I was hooked. I knew I’d have a store, and decided on Portland. I scouted for a location for about a year until I settled on Old Town and signed my first lease without a business name. Nothing I came up with sounded good until I saw advertising for the Rolling Stones concert, Hoodoo Voodoo Lounge, just a day before I opened.

I’ve always preferred a timeless,

one-of-a-kind, bullet-proof

something to Swedish particle

board. Design transcends time.

photo | SHELLEY ROSE PHOTOGRAPHY

photo | HOODOO ANTIQUES



AL 4746

WHAT IS THE MOST DIFFICULT PART OF

RUNNING A BUSINESS?

Signing on employees means they make money whether I sell something or not; no employees means I am an army of one who is always chasing sticks. It boils down to trust and control issues that create the most difficult aspect of running Hoodoo. If I could trust that someone other than me would do whatever needs doing as well or better than me, I could rationalize paying them to do it. By giving up some control, I could chase more sticks.

Aside from being swamped most of the time, running Hoodoo Antiques is the best job I’ve ever had. I love the boss, the dress code, and the autonomy. If something needs to get done, it does. If I need to take a break, I do. If I need to make some money, I sell it.

WHERE DO YOU FIND THE ANTIQUES? DO

PEOPLE BRING YOU ITEMS?

When asked, I tell people that there is a little house in the woods that I like to go to find all the treasure. But it really finds me.

WHAT IS THE LEAST EXPENSIVE ITEM IN

YOUR STORE? AND THE MOST EXPENSIVE?

The least expensive items in Hoodoo are dollar keys. The most expensive item is a ten-foot-by-sixteen-foot neon sign that spells red. As all that remains from the first Fred Meyer store, the circa 1930s red sign is an Oregonian Smithsonian piece.

WHAT MAKES HOODOO ANTIQUES

WELL-SUITED TO PORTLAND?

Keep Portland Weird is a decades-old slogan seen on countless bumper stickers.

Meaning magic of any kind, hoodoo is early English for voodoo. Old Town Portland has a New Orleans vibe, and Hoodoo Antiques is purported to be haunted.

WHAT ERA SPEAKS TO YOU THE MOST

AND WHY?

I always loved the American Arts and Crafts movement and had specialized for a number of years selling original Stickley mission oak furniture, impressionist landscape paintings, and tribal Persian rugs. Styles and tastes change, and currently my focus has been on timeless design, the unusual oddities, industrial and modern furnishings, and folk art.

DO YOU CREATE/MODIFY PIECES

YOURSELF?

I have a full wood and metal shop, and enjoy repurposing and refurbishing relics by hand. Industrial lighting is one of my favorite areas; anything can become a light.

WHAT DO YOU LOVE MOST ABOUT

OWNING A STORE?

I am an extrovert. I think I probably get more excited about the colorful stories and people I meet than the treasure attached to them. The stuff (treasure) is like a river always flowing by. I dunk my Hoodoo in, pull some out, enjoy it, and then throw it back in.

FAVORITE BREAKFAST OR LUNCH SPOT

IN PORTLAND:

If I go out to breakfast, my favorite spot in Portland is Tasty and Sons.

IF YOU WEREN’T RUNNING AN ANTIQUES

BUSINESS, WHAT WOULD YOU BE DOING?

If I wasn’t running Hoodoo, I’d be out loose in the world, picking and selling wherever the adventure took me. I have little baggage, and places can always be leased, bought, or sold. That said, I love Portland and would probably always return here to the place I’ve laid down roots and built a clientele.

I have a full wood and metal shop, and enjoy repurposing and refurbishing relics by hand. Industrial lighting is one of my favorite areas; anything can become a light.

FAVORITE PLACE TO TRAVEL:

I like to travel to water—beaches, islands, rivers, lakes, and springs.

WHAT’S PLAYING ON YOUR IPOD OR

RECORD PLAYER?

I have been listening almost exclusively to Andrew Bird on my iPod.

TELL ME SOMETHING COMPLETELY RANDOM

ABOUT YOURSELF:

I have never met a cheese I didn’t like.

WHAT DO YOU ENJOY IN YOUR FREE TIME?

In my free time, I like to kayak and wrestle with the ghost of my past guitar-playing life.AL :: www.hoodooantiques.com

photo | SHELLEY ROSE PHOTOGRAPHY



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