Stairways and Portals

outside the box 5

Stairways and Portals

by Moneca Kaiser, March, 03 2011

chez studio

It’s wonderful having a studio. I would call it a lab but Markle wants to call his that so I promised not to and studio is cool too. It’s cooler actually, do you think I should let him know? This house I own the mortgage on lets me play with ideas and try things out. Mistakes are precious. They should be called portals to give them their due. For example where would I have hung my elephants had we not messed up the handles on the uppers.

cause I was one & I love them & they bring luck

elephant's portal

I used to feel embarrassed that as a designer I couldn’t draw. I felt it was a fatal flaw until I went to yestermorrow and took a workshop with the founder John Connell, he is one of my heros, very inspired and has laid the foundation for a school that is changing the world one student at a time. I drove him a little bit nuts and before the week was over he was telling me I have to come back to teach and I have and it’s been wonderful. John said something like, “I could teach you how to draw but what for? it might close you in, look at what you already create and build!” and I began to realize it’s because I don’t draw that I can create not in spite of it and I began to realize that it’s more of a choice that I don’t draw. I designed the beautiful house there and he made me promise to actually build it, every one did and I promised.

This is perhaps the agonecstasy of being over forty, just… well ok halfway to fifty and the only polite response is really you don’t look a day over…but I do and it’s ok life is so good now and I can’t and won’t pretend anymore that I am any other than I have chosen to be. I wouldn’t have before had I known that I did, I just thought that, well, I don’t know what I thought but appreciate today that I choose and continue to.

A dear friend and another of my spiritual sister’s said recently, “we get what we ask for.” I was shocked at first but upon examination of my life came to realize the truth in this and the freedom. My teacher used to say that the problem is that we don’t really know how to ask for and what I feel he might have been inferring is that it’s happening all the time, we are doing it constantly but without intention and it can make a lot of confusion this untrained longing.

And we were talking about the challenges with drawings and renderings. It’s that they lock me in and make that picture in everyone’s head and then we all proceed very nicely and end up with something that has a two dimensional quality to it somehow even though it’s actually 3d, even though it’s an actual space.

The Porch of the Year house is a great example, we had to have a drawing for permits and it was such a major undertaking and still after the permit was issued and we had it framed in and were actually quite a ways along…

I decided we needed to turn the stairs around.

I don’t know why now, so much of this happens from a place of feeling and intuition not an intellectual place, I just knew it felt wrong and now it feels right Then there was a 3 week pilgrimage seeking out the holy grail I mean stair. I couldn’t find anything that felt right and kept thinking of different material options and costs and all of it was not right and crazy expensive which might be ok if it was right but it wasn’t. So I came up with using paralam beams which the body shop actually uses a lot but we white washed them and then I found this shiny kinda delightful spindle at the building stores that was actually half the price of the fussy spindles and way more interesting and we custom wove it all together.

And Marc to his credit my so talented woodworker and lead carpenter was able to realize this vision without a decent drawing and patiently working through so many discussions where we would be on a track and I would change direction, literally in this case while he kept reminding me, “Moneca, we need a stair detail, I gotta get these done.” He is so brave, and hopeful, like when he called me when I was moving and said, “hey how about labeling the boxes so I know what room to put them in when they arrive” It’s like he has never met me but we’ve been working together for a few years now.

Speaking of so right that’s what I keep hearing from l people on the street about our porch of the year. That the lines are just right, and that’s how they feel, like we tapped in. I can’t take credit for it, Gillian kept asking me what it would be like and the guys kept saying they needed a detail and we had lots of meeting about it and I never did cough up a drawing just got them to hold this up and mock that up and move this over and wow, you guys are amazing!! So it’s not just because it’s the only porch mkdb built last year that it won its title.

And, here are the toys that I am going to create the “Porch for a New Year” out of at my own place. Bet you can’t wait to see it, me too!!

toys to make with, YEAH!!

I seem to have fallen into a habit of writing to you on Sunday evenings and just between us and Christopher and Justin, they are my favorite ones now, the ones when I write . And it’s cause of Omi and Sifu that I can.

I miss them both.

too much.

Moneca Kaiser

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