RAIN September/October 1984 Special Issue: Art in Everyday Life Cultural Animation Grassroots Art Bamboo '%■ t- ' i. .' \m00 " V^VP' f C.I ittMi ■> {.Mir I' * ■■ #|v- .Kj t *“■■ %■/ Volume X, Number 6
Page 2 RAIN September/October 1984 RAIN Volume X, Number 6 September/October 1984 Editor Tanya Kucak Staff Rob Baird Alan Locklear Steve Manthe Kris Nelson Katherine Sadler F. Lansing Scott Jeff Strang Contributors Anne Cook Dik Cool Bill Flood Ken Kern Tripp Mikich Ancil Nance Jim Taylor Gail Vittori Mary Vogel Tim Warner Rachel Wasser Paul Winkeller Graphic Design Susan Applegate Comptroller Lee Lancaster Printing: Argus Printing Typesetting: Irish Setter RAIN magazine publishes information that can help people lead simple and satisfying lives, make their communities and regions economically self-reliant, and build a society that is durable, just, amusing, and ecologically sound. RAIN is published six times a year by the Rain Umbrella, Inc., a nonprofit corporation located at 3116 North Williams, Portland, OR 97227; 503/249-7218. Subscriptions are $25/year for institutions, $15/year for individuals ($9.50 for persons witli incomes under $6000 a year). For additional information on subscriptions and publications, see page 39. Writers' guidelines are available for a SASE. Editorial and advertising deadlines are two months prior to publication date. RAIN is indexed in the Alternative Press Index and New Periodicals Index. Members of the Rain Umbrella Board of Directors: Bruce Bliatout, Jackie Dehner, Patti Jacobsen, Kim MacColl, Mimi Maduro, Maggie Rogers, Steve Rudman, Sumner Sharpe, and Michael Wells. Copyright © 1984 Rain Umbrella, Inc. No part may be reprinted without written permission. ISSN 0739-621X. Cover: Timberline Lodge. Extensive handwork in structure and furnishings distinguish the lodge, built 1936-38 on the south side of Mt. Hood in Oregon by WPA labor. (Illustration © 1981 by Jim Taylor) by Tanya Kucak For ten years now, RAIN has pointed to ways to live lightly to make where you are paradise. To build better cities, you build better communities; to build better communities, you start at home. You begin with your own life and circle outward. You build connections between your life and your community, your life and nature. Making things better always comes down to personal experience and personal responsibility. Art in Everyday Life is a theme that has been at the core of RAIN's mission over the last decade, but it has rarely been stated explicitly. We're not going to define art here because that's not what we're talking about; rather, we're concerned with art in everyday life, which means participating in the cultural life of your community. It means living in such a way that integration, durability, aesthetics, play, and connection with nature are paramount. Here are the elements of that vision: □ Integration—Art is not separate from life, but an integral part of life. Artistic expression forms part of whatever else everyone does. Actor Peter Coyote, writing in the July 1984 New Age Journal, says, "In the less 'developed' cultures, there is no separation between art and everyday life, between art and community life. Whether they are making a pot, weaving a mat, building a house, or deciding where to plant, average people are empowered with the means and tools and imagination for artistic expression." □ Durability—The things that you use are made of durable materials, and they are put together so that they will last a long time. There is no place for wasted resources—material or human. People do not waste time making or using shoddy or poorly designed goods. □ Aesthetics—People lavish care in making things, because they know they will last. Appropriate design is respected and expected. □ Play—Celebration, playing games, storytelling, and making music are part of community life, and everyone can participate. Leisure time is treasured as an opportunity for play with colors, forms, sounds, ideas. Your value to society increases if you have a balance of work and play (or playful work) in your life. □ Connection with nature—Motifs from nature form the basis of design and decoration, and people make and use things that reflect their part in the surrounding ecology. People are in touch with the imperatives of the natural world. Nature is the source of wisdom. In this issue, we touch on examples from both the past and the present. © 1984 Tanya Kucak
September/October 1984 RAIN Page 3 Illustration from the prologue of the Kelmscott Chaucer, printed by William Morris' Kelmscott Press in 1896 We Have No Art—We Do Everything As Well As We Can by Tanya Kucak The Balinese say, “We have no art—we do everything as well as we can." In other times and other places, the ideal of art in everyday life was a cultural assumption. We can learn from the past. Studying examples from literature and history can give us insight into what it means to be a member of a society in which, art and life were not separate, in which design and balance in life and work were customary. Novels give insight by creating whole worlds. There are several utopian novels that portray agrarian, preindustrial societies where art is integrated with daily life and play is important, where people are not specialists but know about a lot of things. “You touch life in fewer ways" if you do only one thing, according to a character in Austin Tappan Wright's Islandia (1944,1975, 944 pp., $9.95 from: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 383 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10017). Islandia is an isolationist country that does not trade with other nations, and has no industry itself, so the things that people use in their work are made by hand and made well. People travel on horseback, in sailboats, and on skis. Islandians who must live in the city don't consider it their home, but have a place to go, at the country house of a friend or relative, when they need to get away from the city. Leisure time is regarded as productive time; these people would approve of Henry David Thoreau's "wide margins" in his life. At one point in the novel, an American visitor to Islandia tries to convince an Islandian that the country would be better off with railroads and mines. The Islandian explains, "If we go on here as we have been, and are let alone, life hundreds of years from now will be as it is now; and life now with growing things all about us and changing weather and lovely places kept beautiful and new people growing up, is too rich for us already, too rich for us to endure sometimes. We haven't half exhausted it, and we cannot—we cannot so long as young people are born and grow up and learn new things and have new ideas. All that is to us the vital thing ... and the change foreigners propose—railroads
Page 4 RAIN September/October 1984 to carry us about, new machines to till the soil, electric lights, and all that—are just superficial things, and not worth the price we have to pay for them in exchanging our whole way of living, in threatening our children with the chance of ruin!" Wright (1883-1931) invented Islandia when he was a child; he continued to invent maps and a history, and wrote this story, as an adult. In William Morris' News from Nowhere (1890), people spend their time creating useful and beautiful artifacts, which they give to each other freely whenever asked. People live close to the land. Morris decried the effects of industrialization on society and espoused socialism. His vision was of a post-industrial, post-revolutionary society where everyone shares the dreary work and there are no machines. This was the vision that Morris (1834-96) tried to realize in his work. He went to Oxford to study for the Anglican priesthood, but upon reading John Ruskin's essay on "The Nature of Gothic," he decided the way to save souls was through art. In that essay, Ruskin taught that "art is the expression of man's pleasure in labor." (Ruskin also wrote Unto This Last, a book that Gandhi held responsible for "the turning point in my life.") 'A true source of human happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life and elevating them by art.' —William Morris "A true source of human happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life and elevating them by art," Morris wrote. He tried his hand at all the arts in his day. He founded a printing press, illuminated books, designed textiles. Morris looked to medieval times as the ideal—the days when people worked with their hands as well as their minds. (Hermann Hesse captures the spirit of what it's like to be a wandering medieval artist in Narcissus and Goldmund [1930]. Ananda Coomaraswamy has also written about the medieval artist; see "Every Person, A Special Kind of Artist," RAIN V:3.) Morris' ideas led to the birth of the Arts and Crafts movement, which was fueled by the conviction that industrialization had brought with it the destruction of purpose, sense, and life. It saw the uncontrolled advance of technology as a threat to man's spiritual and organic harmony. The Arts and Crafts movement also espoused a return to quality craftsmanship; it promoted the dignity of labor and respect for materials. Morris and his followers attempted to revive the guild system, wherein apprentices perfected their craft under the tutelage of a master. Most of the guilds that were formed in Britain, however, were loose associations of artists and craftsmen who learned from each other by giving workshops and lectures. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Gustav Stickley (1858-1942) founded The Craftsman, a magazine devoted to the dissemination of the Arts and Crafts philosophy in America. People who read RAIN now would probably have read The Craftsman, which was published from 1901 to 1916. The Craftsman promoted the return of simple, natural, and honest life styles and products. Stickley always thought of Arts and Crafts as a political movement. He envisioned a world where people built their own homes, planned their own cities, and made their own furniture. The Craftsman originally focused on the philosophy of William Morris, the possibility of work reform through socialism, and the household arts (furniture design, ceramics, and bookbinding, for example), but its range broadened over the years to include art, architecture, poetry, drama, politics, economics, history, gardening, city planning, education, women, health, and the art of ethnic minorities. There were also how-to articles and Craftsman house plans. In fact, Stickley manufactured Craftsman furniture, and published a few books of his house plans: Craftsman Homes (1909,1979, 205 pp., $6) and More Craftsman Homes (1912,1982, 201 pp., $6.95, both from Dover Publications, 180 Varick Street, New York, NY 10014). Stickley believed that it was important "to have homes of our own, homes that we like, that we have been instrumental in building, that we will want to have belong to our children .. . this means that the homes must be honest and beautiful dwellings; they must be built to last; they must be so well planned that we want them to last, and yet they must be within our means." VOL..1 October, MDCCCCI no.1 Price 20 cents the copy C*»rrlcKv 1901 bv Cwet*v« »itchl*r FROM: The Craftsman
September/October 1984 RAIN Page 5 Eight-room cement house, published in The Craftsman in 1911 fFROM. More Craftsman Homes) Stickley advocated built-in furniture, so that once you move into a house you can begin living there. In the introduction to The Craftsman: An Anthology (edited by Barry Sanders, 1978, 328 pp., $9.95 from: Peregrine Smith, PO Box 667, Layton, UT 84041), Barry Sanders writes: “For Stickley, honest work was done with the hands, in the arts and crafts, in education and farming. He tried to integrate the hand, the heart, and the head in his 'peaceful revolution,' the Arts and Crafts Movement. And he tried to educate others with his work and through his monthly magazine. The Craftsman. For a time Stickley was effective. But aesthetics in contemporary America have disintegrated since then: everything from our formica and naugahyde furniture to our cheesebox architecture—in short, most of our throw-away, disposable culture dates from the close of Gustav Stickley's workshops, and the death of his magazine. The Craftsman." The anthology contains a selection of excellent articles from The Craftsman. Ultimately, the Arts and Crafts movement couldn't endure without the revolution that Morris had envisioned in News from Nowhere. The cost of materials and craftsmanship forced its adherents to work mainly for wealthy customers to support themselves. (This paradoxical situation still exists today for many artisans who rely on their craft for a livelihood.) An interesting account of the Arts and Crafts movement is Peter Davey's Architecture of the Arts and Crafts Movement (1980, 224 pp., $30 cloth from: Rizzoli International Publications, 712 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10019). Davey argues that "the Arts and Crafts belief in quality and individualness again seems relevant. The Arts and Crafts integration of work and leisure could be a basis for a humane future." The Arts and Crafts practitioners never lost sight of the ideal; William Lethaby stated that "what I mean by art... is not the affair of a few but of everybody." Davey writes, "The Arts and Crafts people knew that quality of life depends on all five senses, and that it is to do with the experience of making and using artifacts. To improve quality, work and leisure, instead of being separated into different compartments as they were by the Industrial Revolution, should be more related to each other. Thinking and making should be brought closer together." Davey's book also includes a useful, semi-annotated bibliography. He gives a more critical view of the Modern Movement, which placed its faith in machines and succeeded the Arts and Crafts movement, than does Gillian Naylor in The Arts and Crafts Movement (1971, 208 pp., $10.95 from: MIT Press, 28 Carleton Street, Cambridge, MA 02142). Naylor focuses on the crafts, but largely ignores architecture, so this book is a fine companion to the Davey book, though its tone is academic. 'There have always been indifferent or poor craftsmen who made inferior objects, but we may be living in the first period in history in which goods that can be well made are not.' For an overview of Arts and Crafts activity (focusing on crafts) in the U.S., see The Arts and Crafts Movement in America 1876-1916, edited by Robert Judson Clark (1972, 190 pp., $14.50 from: Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, NJ 08540), an exhibit catalogue with informative captions and commentary. The objects in this book reveal that Americans borrowed from American Indian motifs and were influenced by Japanese design.
Page 6 RAIN September/October 1984 Dining room armchair, 1906, by Charles Greene (FROM: Greene & Greene: Furniture and Related Designs) The best books I've seen on specific craftsmen are Greene & Greene: Architecture as Fine Art, by Randell L. Makinson (1977, $19.95 from: Peregrine Smith, Box 667, Layton, UT 84041) and Greene & Greene: Furniture and Related Designs, by Randell L. Makinson (1982,161 pp., $19.95 from; Peregrine Smith, Box 667, Layton, UT 84041). C. Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene were brothers who practiced architecture in southern California between 1900 and 1930. Both books are well written and contain beautiful photographs of the brothers' fine sense of design, consummate craftsmanship, and eye for detail. Like many Arts and Crafts pioneers in Europe, the Greenes designed every part of a house, including the furniture, stained-glass windows, lighting fixtures, and carpets. Frank Lloyd Wright also worked in this tradition; see The Decorative Designs of Frank Lloyd Wright, by David A, Hanks (1979, $12.95 from: E. P. Dutton, 2 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10016). Indeed, Frank Lloyd Wright echoed the ideals of the Craftsman house in his Prairie architecture, although he did not believe that hand craftsmanship should be revived. ("Prairie Architecture" and "The Art and Craft of the Machine," in Frank Lloyd Wright: Writings and Buildings, selected by Edgar Kauffman and Ben Raeburn, 1960, 346 pp., $9.95 from Horizon Press Publications, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010). Somewhat of an adjunct to Arts and Crafts was Art Nouveau, a decorative style suffused with whimsy whose motifs were derived from nature. Like Arts and Crafts proponents. Art Nouveau adherents typically worked in several genres, and they focused on the decorative and applied arts—furniture, book design, and so on. Some of the same artists worked in both Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau modes, although Art Nouveau was not a political philosophy, and indeed, William Morris thought it much too extravagant. The lines in Art Nouveau are sinuous: twining vines, stylized leaves and flowers, and asymmetrical compositions. A good introduction is Art Nouveau, by Robert Schmutzler (1962,1978, 224 pp., $9.95 from: Harry N. Abrams, 110 East 59th Street, New York, NY 10022). Much good design is indeed based on forms in nature, and study of the forms in nature can reveal the interplay of beauty and utility, form and function. Nature as Designer, by Bertel Bager (1966,176 pp., $7.95 from Van Nostrand Reinhold, 135 West 50th Street, New York, NY 10020) includes both photos and commentary on curious and peculiar plant forms. Patterns in Nature, by Peter Stevens (1974, 256 pp., $7.95 from: Little, Brown & Company, 34 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02106), is a wonderful exploration of the curves and crevices in nature. Nature should be our inspiration—not a direct model to copy—and "we should also find our inspiration in the archetypes, elemental solutions of design evolved from the study of nature by the generations Draioing from Oscar Wilde's "Salome" (1903) by Marcus Behmer, typical of the Art Nouveau style
September/October 1984 RAIN Page 7 before us of simple minded, straightforward, and sensitive people,” according to Paul Jacques Grillo in his book form. Function and Design (1960,1975, 238 pp., $6 from: Dover Publications, 180 Varick Street, New York, NY 10014). Grillo gives examples of good design— primarily in architecture—to prove his point. For example, the peasant invented the overhang at the side of the farmhouse because he had to work outside as well as inside. “For every case, every climate, and every material, [the peasant] has found the most elegant soluhon." The numerous examples of vernacular architecture suited to site, climate, and use attest to this. (Christopher Alexander argues eloquently for the genius of vernacular architecture in The Timeless Way of Building, 1979, $37.50 cloth from: Oxford University Press, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016.) Grillo says that "design is everybody's business ... it affects everybody, at all times, in our lives. Unless we gain a better understanding of design, we shall witness our environment getting steadily worse, in spite of the constant improvement of our machines and tools." More than any other culture, the Japanese seem to have been aware of the importance of design in shaping their lives. Ralph Caplan makes a similar claim in his book By Design: Why there are no locks on the bathroom doors in the Hotel Louis XIVand other object lessons (1982, 208 pp., $6.95 from: McGraw-Hill, 1221 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020). Caplan writes, "For design is a process for making things right, for shaping what people need." The point of the book is that "design, which is now directed largely to superficial ends, is appropriate to our most significant human activities, and belongs to them." To Caplan, the products of design include not only chairs and vacuum cleaners, but also films, books, government legislation, and protest strategies. Caplan knows we can do better: "There have always been indifferent or poor craftsmen who made inferior objects, but we may be living in the first period in history in which goods that can be well made are not." He says that "industrial designers are trained or experienced in a process appropriate to significant problems. In wasting them—with their collusion—we waste not only our resources, but ourselves." (Victor Papanek has argued these points extensively in Design for the Real World [1972,1982, 312 pp., $5.95 from: Academy Chicago Ltd., 425 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60611]. Papanek critiques specifics of current manufactured items, and suggests alternative designs.) Furthermore, Caplan believes that technology requires art: "Above and beyond the maker's inshnct for beauty, and the sales manager's instinct for something different and hence 'better,' probably only through art can we manage to live sanely with our machines. Design is a means of restraining our mastery over the machine and of forbidding its mastery over us. The industrial civilization that once relegated art to the museum would, paradoxically, be intolerable without a regular infusion of art. The oil refinery, the digital computer, the milling machine—each of these needs to be made understandable by art, which comes into the factory not as an afterthought but as a necessity." What Caplan says has relevance to the interdisciplinary perspective of RAIN: "If design is to become a force for making things right, we need to learn more about connections, for making them is intrinsic to every design from submarines to the door hooks in the Hotel Louis XIV. Connections between ... such disparate materials as wood and steel, between such seemingly alien disciplines as physics and painting, between clowns and mathematical concepts, between people—architects and mathematicians and poets and philosophers and corporate executives." Caplan also discusses the work of designers Charles and Ray Fames. Charles Fames has said, "The concept of 'appropriateness,' this 'how-it-should-be- ness,' has equal value in the circus, in the making of a work of art, and in science." Caplan adds, "A circus is an object lesson in what Fames advised us all to do: take pleasure seriously. The circus looks like self expression and is not; it pushes against limits; it takes its beauty from a disciplined mastery of details and from the con- nechons between them. In these respects it is the classic designed situation." More than any other culture, the Japanese seem to have been aware of the importance of design in shaping their lives. Bernard Rudofsky demonstrates the Japanese taste for aesthetically pleasing surroundings in The Kimono Mind: An Informal Guide to Japan and the Japanese (1965,1982, 288 pp., $9.95 from: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 135 West 50th Street, New York, NY 10020). This is an entertaining, witty, irreverent account of Japanese life, with chapters on kimonology, rice, hedonism for the destitute (bathing), train travel, and more. The Japanese sense of design has had a significant influence on Western art'ever since Westerners discovered it in the mid-1800s. Clay Lancaster documents the streams of thought and aesthetic influence on America in The Japanese Influence on America (1963,1983, 292 pp.. Traditional Japanese border designs
Pages RAIN September/October 1984 $39.95 cloth from: Abbeville Press, 505 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10022). Indeed, Sherman Lee argues that the major difference between Chinese and Japanese art is the unequalled Japanese sense of design. Lee backs up his argument with an extensive portfolio of examples in The Genius of Japanese Design (1981, 203 pp., $39.95 cloth from: Kodan- sha International, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022). According to Lee, the elements of Japanese design consist of asymmetry, intuitive placement, subtle shades and combinations of colors, and the dominance of pattern and motif. His introductory essay comprises the first 30 pages of the book; the rest consists of photographs in color and black and white. A more affordable introduction to Japanese design is Japanese Decorative Style, by Sherman Lee (1972,161 pp., $5.95 from: Harper and Row, 49 East 33rd Street, New York, NY 10016). An excellent source book on Japanese design—and one RAIN has used extensively—is Japanese Design Motifs: 4,260 Illustrations of Heraldic Crests (compiled by the Matsuya Piece-Goods Store, translated by Fumie Adachi, 1913,1972, 216 pp., $6.50 from: Dover Publications, 180 Varick Street, New York, NY 10014). The book consists of the logos of Japanese families, arranged by motif. The design of the motifs attests to Japanese expertise in design. Folk arts and crafts in Japan are called mingei. These are objects that were necessary in the everyday lives of common people, but were not singled out for their aesthetic value until Soetsu Yanagi (1889-1961) focused on them. Yanagi believed: "To me the greatest thing is to live beauty in our daily life and to crowd every moment with things of beauty. It is then, and only then, that the art of the people as a whole is endowed with its richest significance. For its products are those made by a great many craftsmen for the mass of the people, and the moment this art declines the life of the entire nation is removed far away from beauty. So long as beauty abides in only a few articles created by a few geniuses, the Kingdom of Beauty is nowhere near realization." Bernard Leach has translated Yanagi's essays in Soetsu Yanagi, The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty (1972, 230 pp., $12.95 from: Kodansha International, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022). Contrary to William Morris' beliefs that the vision of each individual craftsman was different, Yanagi believed that "the craftsman is essentially a communal worker; when individualism arises, the paths of 'artist' and 'craftsman' diverge.... Most beauty is related to laws thaf transcend the individual." According to Yanagi, the difference between the crafts and the arts is that "People hang their pictures high up on walls, but they place their objects for everday use close to them and take them in their hands." Folk crafts are "unself-consciously handmade and unsigned for the people by the people. Traditional Japanese family crests cheaply and in quantity, as for example, the Gothic crafts, the best work done under the Medieval guild system." Yanagi also admired Sung Chinese crafts, and he claimed that he never saw "even a single bad fifth century Egyptian Coptic or ancient Peruvian textile. Every piece is very beautiful." Yanagi saw not only beauty but also deeper meanings in traditional arts: "I would like to believe that beauty is of deep import to our modern age.. .. might not beauty, and the love of the beautiful, perhaps bring peace and harmony? Could it not carry us forward to new concepts of life's meaning? Would it not establish a fresh concept of culture? Would it not be a dove of peace between the various cultures of mankind?" A good survey of the popular, utilitarian arts in Japan is Folk Arts and Crafts ofJapan (volume 26 in the Heibon- sha Survey of Japanese Art; 1967,1973,164 pp., $17.50 cloth from: Weatherhill/Heibonsha, 149 Madison Avnue, New York, NY 10016). The photos of everyday objects used in Japan bear out the claim of their beauty. The best affordable collection of photos of specific categories of everyday objects is Kodansha's "Form and Function" series, focusing on the beauty of everyday objects. Titles include Japanese Brushes, Japanese Spoons and Ladles, Japanese Teapots, and Japanese Bamboo Baskets (1979,1980,1981, about 80 pp. each, $8.95 each from: Kodansha International, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022). The introduction to the series states: "The aim of this series is to make the reader approach practical objects as a fresh experience and know the profound satisfaction to be had from owning and frequently using well-crafted things, the successful marriage of form and function. When exposure to shoddy, mass-produced, ill-designed objects reaches some critical point, then people come to appreciate the forms and qualities of common things crafted and shaped through generations of human experience. These books focus upon objects hitherto either taken for granted or disregarded as commonplace." Another interesting source of information on mingei is Mingei: Japan's Enduring Folk Arts (by Amaury St.- Gilles, 1983, 260 pp., $12.95 from: Heian International, PO Box 2402, South San Francisco, CA 94083). St.-Gilles profiles 116 folk arts, indexed by place of origin, and tells stories or anecdotes about the uses or events associated with the use of each folk art. A good presentation of the steps in making traditional Japanese crafts today is Japanese Crafts (by John Lowe, 1983,175 pp., $25.50 cloth from: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 135 West 50th Street, New York, NY 10020). Lowe examines 14 traditional crafts that are practiced today, and shows craftsmen at work. There are more examples of art in everyday life—this attitude of doing things as well as you can. In this preliminary exploration, I have pointed to a mere handful of examples I've come upon in my reading. Instances of art in everyday life as a cultural phenomenon—particularly in traditional cultures—could fill volumes. In fact, I plan to expand this exploration into a book. □ □ © 1984 Tanya Kucak
September/October 1984 RAIN Page 9 Bamboo in Everyday Life by Tanya Kucak Bamboo is probably the most useful plant in the world. Scholars have listed over 1000 uses for bamboo. "For over half of our species, life would be completely different without it," writes Mary Vogel. At the exhibit "China, 7000 Years of Discovery," which was at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle March 1 to August 31, 1984, one exhibit case shows a wealth of items made from bamboo. The accompanying text states, "Every part of the bamboo is used: Young shoots are eaten, the pulp is used to make paper, the stems are split and woven to serve as baskets, the leaves are used for thatch and raincoats; brews made from the seeds, leaves, sap, and roots have medicinal applications." There are "suspension" bridges in China, made from bamboo, that have lasted more than 1000 years. In most bamboos, the woody culm, or stalk, is hollow. The stalk is divided by nodes, which add strength. Bamboo is strong, light, stiff, and cheap, and it is easy to work with simple tools. Bamboos range in size from a few inches to 120 feet tall and a foot or more in diameter, and they also vary widely in shape and color. Bamboo is abundant and fast-growing. It occurs naturally on every continent except Europe and Antarctica. Where it grows, it grows like a weed, since it propagates itself by producing rhizomes that branch out from the parent plant, forming underground networks. There are about 1000 species of bamboo. (When bamboo flowers—once every 30 to 120 years, depending on the species—all the plants of the same species flower at almost the same time everywhere in the world. The plants die after they flower, but surviving rhizomes and seeds reestablish the grove within five years.) As a bonus, bamboo propagates itself rapidly. The culm emerges from the rhizome with the same diameter as the adult stalk, reaches full growth in two to three months, and is harvestable in three to four years. In fact, bamboo grows so fast you can almost watch it grow. Japan's commonest bamboo, Phyllostachys bambu- soides, can grow almost four feet in 24 hours. Moreover, bamboo is an abundant material that has been used well and beautifully. Many things, if they are abundant, are taken for granted, and people don't put much thought into their use. Petroleum and weeds are two examples of wasted resources. Yet although bamboo grows like a weed, people have found ways to use it well and even reverently. Richard Gage expands upon the importance of bamboo to the Japanese in his essay in Forms, Textures,
Page 10 RAIN September/October 1984 Section ofagrowing bamboo culm, sheaving stages of development (FROM; The Bamboos: A Fresh Perspective) Images: Traditional Japanese Craftsmanship in Everyday Life (a photo-essay by Takeji Iwamiya, edited by Mitsukuni Yoshida, 1978,1979, 304 pp., $125 cloth from: Weatherhill/Tankosha, 6 East 39th Street, New York, NY 10016). Gage writes that “the Japanese probably reveal themselves most clearly in their ways of dealing with bamboo. This plant... lends itself to an incredible variety of uses that range from food (the bamboo shoot is a much relished delicacy) to fans and flower vases. It is an architectural material, a partitioning or curtaining material, and a weaving material for containers of all kinds. It can be split to become the ribs of umbrellas, the frameworks for paper lanterns, and the ornamental stoppers for bottles of sake offered to the gods. Bamboo makes music; it provides measuring, spinning, and weaving devices, and it forms the cages for birds and insects. It covers hillsides with masses of feathery green plumage, furnishes poles on which to hang the wash, and is in general such a friend to man that one is scarcely surprised to learn that the Japanese consider it one of the four noble plants (along with the chrysanthemum, the plum blossom, and the orchid) and accord it a place of honor in the triad of auspicious plants—pine, bamboo, and plum—unfailingly called upon to dignify things when felicitations are in order or good luck is desired." Iwamiya's photographs show the beauty of everyday objects made of bamboo. More than any other material, bamboo expresses the attitude of art in everyday life because it has been used so extensively and beautifully in Japan. Intrigued? Want to learn more? The best short introduction to the properties and uses of bamboo is “Bamboo: The Giant Grass," by Luis Marden (in National Geographic, October 1980, pages 502-529, from: National Geographic Society, 17th and M streets, NW, Washington, DC 20036). “Bamboo is all things to some men, and some things to all men," Marden writes. He documents his visits with bamboo experts in China, Japan, and India. The article is full of interesting facts about bamboo. For instance, Thomas Edison tried more than 6,000 materials for a light-bulb filament before discovering that charred fibers of bamboo worked best. One of the most beautiful books I've seen is Bamboo, by Robert Austin, Koichiro Ueda, and Dana Levy (1970, 216 pp., $27.50 cloth from: John Weatherhill, 6 East 39th Street, New York, NY 10016). The book consists primarily of photos by Dana Levy, showing both bamboo varieties in nature and the range of objects used in everyday life that are made of bamboo. There are more lush photographs of bamboo in nature in The World of Bamboo (photographed by Shinji Takama, 1983, 236 pp., $75 cloth from: Heian International, PO Box 2402, South San Francisco, CA 94080). Finally, there is The Bamboos: A Fresh Perspective, by Floyd A. McClure (1967, 347 pp., published by Harvard University Press, now out of print). This is a botanical treatise, and includes a comprehensive bibliography. McClure wrote extensively on the botany and uses of bamboo (including the Encyclopedia Brittanica article on bamboo). He wrote Bamboo as a Building Material for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agriculture Service in 1953 (reprinted by the Peace Corps, 1979). Another good resource is Bamboo in Building Construction (a series of articles, collected by Dr. Jules J. A. Janssen, Eindhoven University of Technology, second edition, 1982,177 pp., from: ITDG Bookshop, 9 King Street, London, WCIE 8HN, England). This is an English translation and revision of a 1974 Dutch manual on bamboo, with information on preservation, housing, bridges, roads, boats and rafts, water supply, and bamboo-reinforced concrete. □ □ Painting Bamboo Bamboo is also prevalent in Chinese brush painting, a technique that often uses just one color of ink—black—and a few simple brushes to achieve exquisite effects. The Chinese say that you begin learning to paint bamboo after you have painted it 1000 times. To get started, find a good teacher. Consult the classics and how-to manuals. Here are three books that can help you master the art and give you an appreciation for the cultures that revere bamboo. The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting (translated and edited by Mai-mai Sze, 1956, 625 pp., $10.95 from: Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, NJ 08540) provides the philosophical background and some examples of classic composition. Only a small portion of the book covers bamboo. To learn how to hold the brush and form the leaves, read Chinese Painting in Four Seasons: A Manual of Aesthetics and Technique (by Leslie Tseng- Tseng Yu, 1981,195 pp., $10.95 from: Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632). The exercises in this book are truly useful; you learn step-by-step how to paint the trunk, leaves, and branches, and you can develop a good sense of composition by following the examples. A more comprehensive manual, Chinese Painting Techniques (by Alison Stilwell Cameron, 1967, $37.50 cloth from Charles E. Tuttle, 28 South Main Street, Rutland, VT 05701), provides more extensive examples as well as good how-to information. Tuttle publishes many wonderful books, but they are expensive—get this book from your library. —TK
September/October 1984 RAIN Page 11 Local Resource Integrated Building System Bamboo as a Building Material As a building material, bamboo is flexible yet tough; it can be pliant or rigid, as the occasion demands; after heating, it can be bent to take and retain a new shape; and it can be split with ease-but only in one direction. As we recognize the diminishing of our fossil-fuel resources in the West and the depletion of our forests, wouldn't it make sense for our modern culture to take advantage of some of the wisdom of the ages in utilizing the remarkable bamboo plant? Thankfully, a few far-sighted groups ofpeople have been experimenting with bamboo as a building material in the U.S. for several years. (Please send self-addressed stamped envelopes with generous postage ifyou're requesting a reply from any of the sources listed below.) -Mary Vogel by Gail Vittori The use of bamboo as a building material spans scores of centuries and civilizations, and for good reason. A prolific plant species adapted to a surprisingly diverse array of climatic regimes, bamboo's applications range from water pipes to foundation reinforcement, from multi-story scaffolding to wallboard, trellises, fences. roof trusses and more (not to mention the delectable, edible bamboo shoots!). Find a society that has maintained its building techniques, living amid bamboo jungles, and you can be sure to discover bamboo being put to use in ways that will stagger the Western, 20th- century-biased senses. What has made and continues to make bamboo especially worthy of use is its remarkable melding of form and function, thereby pleasing both the artistic and utilitarian eye. Bamboo is revered for its beauty by many Eastern societies and religions, and also boasts a tensile strength of 28,000 pounds per square inch, better than that of steel, which averages about 23,000 pounds per square inch. Our work with bamboo at Max's Pot in Austin, Texas, has proven it to be a valuable component to community- oriented, low-cost housing and economic-development efforts, since it can represent a job multiplier of more than two times that of steel. If the bamboo is actually harvested in the community in which it is to be used, there are many more jobs associated with its use than simply transporting and installing. Harvesting bamboo, which should happen at a specific time in the plant's
Page 12 RAIN September/October 1984 growth cycle, is followed by drying, splitting (as determined by end-use), and treating to prevent rot and decay. The issue of preservation is a hot topic, as many methods currently prescribed involved the use of highly toxic chemicals that have deleterious effects on both the workers applying them and those later exposed to any residual effects. We are currently experimenting with two nontoxic methods of preservation, but with no conclusive evidence as of this writing, it is premature to report on them. Finally, and perhaps most important, when compared with steel, we found that bamboo takes approximately 170 times less energy to produce than its equivalent steel reinforcing bar, though its water requirement limits it to areas with substantial groundwater supplies. The diagram above is an example of a community demonstration building using a variety of indigenous materials. In this building, bamboo is used as foundation reinforcement, door lintel reinforcement, no-wood caliche/bamboo portal systems for doors, bamboo- reinforced roof trusses, and bamboo trellis systems for shading windows with vines. Bamboo, like many other indigenous, abundant building materials, presents the opportunity for many people to have access to safe, efficient, and beautiful housing, regardless of income, which is one of the goals Max's Pot is working toward. Gail Vittori works at the Centerfor Maximum Potential Building Systems (Max's Pot), which has done extensive work on the use of indigenous building materials, particularly bamboo and caliche. Caliche is a hardpan soil that covers 9% of the ivorld's surface and is useful in earth building. For more information about Max's Pot or a list of its publications on earth construction, passive climatic design, or appropriate technology, send a SASE to the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems, 8604 Webberville Road, Austin, TX 78724; 5121926-4786. Illustration from A Loiv-Cost Earthquake-Resistant House by Mary Vogel At the Aprovecho Research Center, where I have lived and worked, bamboo has been used in the construction of three small buildings: a one-person residence, a guest sleeping space, and an outhouse. The bamboo residence is by far the most complex of the three, requiring much more knowledge and skill to build. It was constructed with a latticework of bamboo walls and roof, which support concrete-soaked burlap and insulation. The house was partially built by seminar participants who were taught ancient systems of bending, shaping, splitting, and lashing bamboo. The house was designed and largely completed by architect Jim Orjala, who founded Aprovecho's bamboo project. We hope to popularize bamboo as a building material in the Northwest. (Jim has moved to the Bay Area, and the current co-coordinators—Linda Smiley and myself—are looking for a dynamic communitarian-type entrepreneur with vision to carry on the goals of the project: experimentation, education, and dissemination. The position involves a 20-hour work exchange for room and board; joint community household; run bamboo nursery. Contact Aprovecho Research Center, 80574 Hazelton Road, Cottage Grove, OR 97424; 503/942-9434.) Find a society living amid bamboo jungles that has maintained its building techniques, and you'll discover bamboo used in ways staggering to your senses. Bamboo is also grown at the Aprovecho Research Center as a nursery crop for sale or trade, as a privacy screen between our property and our neighbors, and as an aesthetic shelter from the sun on a hot summer day and from the rain on a wet winter day. Buddha chose to die in a grove of bamboo, but none of us have gone beyond meditating there yet. Bamboo survived the atomic blast at Hiroshima closer to ground zero than any other living thing, but the toughest test we plan for it at the Aprovecho Research Center is for erosion control in gulleys caused by former logging operations. Throughout Asia bamboo groves' interlocked roots restrain rivers in floods and support rural villages during earthquakes. Our work at the research center has enabled us to network with many other groups that are doing similar work in popularizing bamboo as a building material. I recently visited Jane and Otis Mullan and their children in the Sierra Nevada of California, where they live and work as part of a land-based intentional community. They had just completed a bamboo-reinforced earth wall, and burlap/cement-roofed schoolhouse. School- children, as well as inexperienced adults, participated in building this structure In this earth-bermed school-
house, woven, split bamboo reinforced the concrete (3% bamboo to concrete), and larger vertical bamboo was used as wall reinforcement. Smaller vertical bamboo served as electrical conduit within the wall. The Mullans hope to take their building methodology to Mexico and Nicaragua this fall. They have detailed the steps of their building process in an excellent booklet, A Low-Cost Earthquake-Resistant House, which is available for $2 plus a self-addressed stamped envelope from: Jane and Otis Mullan, Solar Song Construction/Mullein Press, Box 533, Colfax, CA 95713. Two friends of the Mullans, Barbara and Ken Kern, are also involved in bamboo building experimentation. The Kerns describe their building process for the clay- bamboo roof of their studio in The Earth Sheltered Owner- Built Home, which they co-authored with the Mullans: "As soon as the structural layer of clay roofing has been cast over the bamboo framework, an insulating layer of clay is applied over the first.... A final 2-inch-thick structural capping that is the same as the first batch is then applied over this insulating layer of clay for a total panel thickness of 9 inches at the edges. This capping layer spans over the top of the roof beam, covering the second layer of bamboo that is wired to the first layer." This information-packed book is available for $9.95 plus postage from Owner-Builder Publications, Box 817, North Fork, CA 93643. (Ken Kern has recently told RAIN that he is working on a new book entitled A House of Clay. Ken writes, "1 don't think you can talk about bamboo as a construction material without also talking about clay. They go together, like concrete and reinforcing steel. My current building prototype consists of cast-in-place concrete arches over which an armature of bamboo is fastened and then plastered with stabilized clay.") If 1 have stimulated your interest in the uses of bamboo, hang on. The Book of Bamboo by David Farrelly promises to be the most comprehensive survey of the uses of bamboo I know of in the English language. Farrelly will deal with bamboo in art, music, and philosophy as well as in shelter construction—past, present, and future. He will also cover plant behavior, variety of species, cultivation, harvesting, and curing. Sierra Club Books (2034 Fillmore Street, San Francisco, CA 94115) plans to release the book in October 1984. □ □ In addition to being involved with bamboo and appropriate technologies/lifestyles, Mary Vogel is a teacher/writer on “investing for a sustainablefuture" and a dealer for earth- sheltered dome housing. She lives in Eugene, Oregon. September/October 1984 RAIN Page 13 Pylon bridge built from bamboo (FROM: Bamboo in Building Construction)
Page 14 RAIN September/October 1984 Bringing Life to Communities: Cultural Animation by Bill Flood Bill Flood is a community development specialist and anirna- teur in Portland. He works with groups to bring about needed organizational change or to stimulate the development of community services and activities. He says, "I use the disciplines of research, organizing, planning, and management to accomplish my work. In 1980,1 heard about a European model of socio-cultural community development called cultural animation. Since 1980, much of my time and energy has been spent researching and writing on cultural animation as it is used in Europe, Canada, and the U.S. Cultural animation explores the cultural perspective of community life that traditional American community development has long overlooked.” He will be teaching a course on cultural animation at MaryIhurst College, in Marylhurst, Oregon, beginning fanuary 1985. You can reach him at 625 NW 20th Avenue, Portland, OR 97209; 5031248-0939. Animation comes from the Latin anima, meaning life or breath. Cultural animation describes a way of bringing vitality and local control back to communities. American concepts of empowerment and cultural pluralism are closely related to this European concept. The following examples illustrate activities that do and do not have the qualities of cultural animation: A "town walk"—residents walking together and discussing the future of their town, versus an aerobic exercise class; a theater group of elderly persons, content focused upon their life experience, versus a ballet performance in a community that has virtually no interest in ballet; a locally controlled radio station scheduling community- oriented programs, versus ABC, NBC, and CBS scheduling solely on the basis of commercial appeal; children painting their own designs that tell the story of their town, versus laying colorful bricks in a street to beautify the street; unemployed persons organizing for mutual support, employment opportunities, or changing the status of unemployment benefits, versus unemployed persons receiving a monthly benefit check. Cultural animation emphasizes the power of public participation. The arts, recreation, education, communication processes, social services, community planning, and community development can all be a part of a cultural animation process. The central force, however, must be the community residents and their visions for
September/October 1984 RAIN Page 15 the future. The animateur, or worker facilitating the community change, believes that the answers to community problems lie within the community. Bringing people together through participatory research, planning, and direct cultural expression will allow solutions to surface. The animateur works much like the artist— encouraging creativity and expression; much like the social worker—helping people identify and meet social needs; much like the organizer—mobilizing the social and political forces of people. Animation originated in the lifeless environment of the European "new towns" (post-World War II planned communities). The following Council of Europe quotation describes one such planned community in France, seven years after its development: "There are towns that look like architects' models. There are men and women who live there, children going to school, painted benches in the market square. Yet the town is lifeless. Nothing throbs, nothing happens; nothing ever will happen. Walking through the streets, the passer-by will not be caught in a dream, there will be nothing to attract his gaze, and no surprise encounter." Animation developed to bring back the lost sense of common bonds or collectivity, the "sense of community" found in premodern society. This lack of cultural vitality is not limited to the European new towns. Many American communities clearly display the symptoms of a society advancing technologically while leaving behind its history, traditions, and unique human strengths. In the last ten years, there has been increased interest in cultural animation in the U.S., especially among community artists. Cultural animation is a process by which people initiate and carry out purposeful change, change geared toward improving their individual and collective way of life. Animation challenges existing standards and mechanisms for maintaining social welfare, encouraging the development of stronger communities. Animation places high value on the fulfillment of individuals and groups via cultural participation and is rooted in the assumption that no one culture is inherently better than another. Many American communities clearly display the symptoms of a society advancing technologically while leaving behind its history, traditions, and unique human strengths. Animation in Germany In 1974,1 spent the summer working with children and their parents in Ludwigsburg, West Germany, at the Ludwigsburg Jugendverein (youth farm). Parents had cooperatively bought a piece of property on the edge of town so their children could play in a relatively safe environment, their play unstructured by adults. Children came in the afternoons to build huts, take care of the animals in the "zoo," play in the sand, or talk. The children established their own democratic political system to handle everyday issues on the farm—electing a mayor and zookeeper, for example. They dealt cooperatively with problems. It served not only as a time and place for children to relax and play as they wanted, but also as an early experience in participatory democracy. Animation in England In 1974, Elizabeth Leyh was hired as a town artist in the new town of Milton Keynes. The Development Corporation of Milton Keynes supported a sculpture studio in a house designated for community use. The studio was open to any individual or group in the community. The local Hospital Action Group used the studio to build a 12-foot question mark, the symbol of the group. For publicity, the group placed the sculpture on a proposed hospital site. Leyh participated in the design of public-housing play areas. She saw public participation in the design process as a first step to people becoming actively involved in the planning and design of their community. The work included a giraffe lying on the ground with a neck extending 33 meters up a hill—designed by a 14- year-old girl living adjacent to the play area, and built by community residents. Leyh said, "The giraffe we are building on the estate is the work of many people, whose skills and creativity will make it that much more valuable. It's a sculpture piece being built by more than one person, and it incorporates the individual skills of the residents of the city, the architects who are working in the city, and myself." Animation in Montana In 1982, the Montana Arts Council sponsored a team of artists in two communities in Montana. Artists worked with local elderly residents to make artistic statements about the effects of economic changes in their community on their lives. Communities selected for the project represented extreme cases of "boom" and "bust," that is, sudden economic growth or decline. Artists were well-received in the "bust" community, and indeed, facilitated cultural participation and expression. The "boom" community rejected the artists, who were unable to establish enough rapport to work with residents. Perhaps the "bust" economy perpetuated a "sense of community" in residents, which made them eager to participate with others in cultural expression. The "boom" economy, much like the early European new towns, perpetuated the lack of communal spirit. (The new towns, unlike the Montana "boom" town, called for the animation process.) Animation in Illinois In June and July 1984, the Bushnell Community Recreation and Cultural Center, Two Rivers Arts Council, and Illinois Arts Council sponsored a cultural animation project for Bushnell, Illinois. The community center was built in 1975, yet cultural activities have remained one-time activities, unrelated to the lives of community residents. For the most part, citizens have not been
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