Tibetan Temple #3

I rediscovered polymer clay after a 20 year hiatus. Back in the early 90s, I made beads and pins and jewelry items.

This time around, I had in mind the tiny lumberyard and all my little itty bitty constructions. For the Zendo, I formed a little platter, a bowl and a vase. In the midst of the experiments, I fell in love again with this versatile medium. There are a bunch of useless polymer items around my studio right now,  a giant red flower, some art deco pillars, on the way to making tiny creations for the Tibetan Temple:

Here is the tiny tile floor, made from a large sheet of polymer clay, conditioned and rolled out to accommodate my 7x7 inch plan. After baking, I cut out the corner tiles to make room for the 1x1 inch pillars.

The wood base for the temple is three sheets of basswood glued together and framed in around the tiles.

I was attracted to Buddhist teachings because of the three essentials: (a) ethical conduct, (b) mental discipline and (c) wisdom. Along the way, I learned about making malas (another post) and painting as a meditation.

While studying Thangka painting, mental discipline was necessary, as was patience with myself and for the slow emergence of anything resembling a Buddha.

This little tile floor will be painted blue, the base stained with red.

The miter box lessons from my son, Michael, come in handy with my tiny tools. I am pretty happy with my corners.

Tulku Jamyang and his wife, Chigme, invited me often to share their Tibetan dinners. It was all very mysterious to me, big bowls of chopped meat, tureens of thick soup, flat breads and sweet pastes and sticky rices. We ate heartily with fat spoons as well as our fingers and drank copious amounts of rich dark tea with coconut butter (no yaks for miles and miles).

When I work out my Tibetan Temple, I remember Tuklu Jamyang's teachings, and translate the sacred geometry into my constructions.

I have become more patient over the years through meditations of all kinds, other art forms, knitting, of course, but the memory of Mondays with Tulku Jamyang, his quiet teachings, his generous spirit, hover around me like a sprite.

As I teach myself to sculpt with polymer clay, I'll make a teacher, a student and a Buddha.

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Making Stuff - Japanese Teahouse #5

 I found these tools while assembling my "Temples, Shrines & Teahouses" Kit. My husband David's father was a golf course architect, therefore collected these sets of marvelous tools. I don't even know what to do with most of the Xacto blades, still very sharp, but I love the set and the little blue box. And the carving tools on the right are overkill for Basswood and Balsa, but I love to look at them.

A regular Xacto blade will work for a carving tool when your medium is craft or popsicle sticks and Balsa wood so soft you could sculpt it with your fingernails.

Today I carved the pieces for the roof line. Each one has to be an absolute exact duplicate of the other or the roof will not fit squarely together. (The very accomplished artist's YouTube Tutorial I have watched about fifty times showed glueing the whole thing together with coffee stir sticks, but tiny trim board is more reliably straight.)

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Studio #12 - The Laundry Room +

We moved into our love nest about three weeks before our first marriage ceremony, dubbed the IRS wedding, on December 31, 2003.  You’ll hear about Wedding Number 2, Valentine’s Day, 2004 elsewhere in the blog.



At 7990 I packed most of my studio paraphernalia into the dark and rather gloomy laundry room and shared my creative space with the washer, dryer, a cat box and the water heater.
In this space, and spilling into the kitchen and onto the decks by necessity, I painted one little Jack Russell terrier sculpture for the Carmel Art Festival and the next year four plaster-cast dogs for CAF and five resin cat sculptures for a spin-off fundraiser.

Although I enjoyed painting the little terrier, the clean lines of the elegant Egyptian style dogs in 2005 allowed for exquisite details - layers of paint, tiny lines, many dots, applications of beads and other adornments. The CATZ, sponsored by the Monterey Symphony, the Mozart Society, Chamber Music Monterey Bay and the Carmel Music Society,  were PizziCato, MagnifiCat, Meowzart and Kitty Bouquet.

Tout Uncommon, Pied a Terrier, Haut Diggity Dog and Cinnabar represented four of the local retail shops. All dogs and cats were sold at auction to raise money for charities.

This event inspired me to organize twelve local artists to paint “Musical Chairs” for the Carmel Music Society 12th Night Auction/Dinner Dance. Once again, my studio spilled out of the laundry room, this time, onto the deck, where I spread a drop cloth and decorated two matching straight back chairs.

At 7990 my garden expanded from a few herbs in a pot to an acre of Sugar Pie pumpkins, artichokes, beans, tomatoes, and flowering herbs and this, too, became part of my outdoor studio, with a potting shed that held all the usual tools plus a mannequin names Kate Hepburn and a little corner with old wood, brushes and a few acrylic paints for sign making.

 When the tenant in the guest house moved on to greener pastures, I moved myself in lickety-split and spent the next few years amid myriad projects before the next folly took control of my desires.

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Studio #6 - Spring Mountain

“Where will you go?” My friend Sampson asked during the phone call when I told him my restless self would be on the move again.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I have my little bed-sit in LA.”

“You hate LA,” he said.

“I know, I know.”

“Come see my Paradise on the mountain,” he said.

I rolled my eyes. He didn’t see me roll my eyes, of course, but he knew.

“Stop rolling your eyes,” he said, “and come check it out. I have room.”

So I hopped a plane, which he met in San Francisco with flowers from his garden and a bottle of wine from his favorite vineyard, Folie a Deux. I wondered if he was trying to tell me something. It was too late, if he was. He was 80, I was approaching 50, we’d been the best of friends for years. Sampson invariably introduced me as his “little sister.”

Late afternoon sun glittered over the dormant Napa Valley grape vines, turning the bushy little plants of tiny mustard flowers into shmears of buttery yellow. We drove up, up the hill to the property, seven hundred acres of grapes and seven different kinds of trees. The owner, a cheese and washing machine heir, gave Sam carte blanche to design and build him a house on his little man-made lake tucked away in the forest of oaks, pine, madrone, manzanita, fur, cedar and maple.

Sam lived in a three bedroom/two bath caretaker’s cottage. After three days of friendship, conversation, good food and rest, he said, in distillation, “You need healing. Do it here.”

And so I did.

There’s not much to say about the tiny bedroom/studio on Spring Mountain: a drawing board and a folding table. One of Sam’s architect friends taught me how to make miniature houses to scale.

I made a tea house. I made earrings out of old book papers and created a bunch of largely unsell-able stuff for a couple of local gift shows.

I did heal on that mountain. How can you not? Quality air, with only the sounds of the hoot owls and coyotes at night. No more honk, honk, beep beep, hurry hurry. Just me, my own bed, my yoga mat, music, some good food, someone to talk to and a little room for my ebbing and flowing stash of art paraphernalia. It was good.

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Studio on the Move

About the time I stepped into the Orchard studio in Ojai, my attentions got diverted to LA, where I signed up for the UCLA Design Program. Classes in the arts of Trompe l’oeil, Shiburi dying and surface design (and a little dip back into commercial acting) took me all over downtown LA to various teacher’s studios (and several theaters).

I divided my time between Ojai and LA for the next three years, transformed the kitchens of my two borrowed apartments into temporary art spaces (one in Santa Monica and one in the fancy shmancy apartments in Marina Del Rey) until I rented a friend’s guesthouse in Culver City, where I could prepare my artsy homework and rehearse for acting classes unseen and unheard.

Three years! What was I thinking? Compared to my life now (where I walk to the grocery store and post office and take the car out twice a week), I was in Hell - on and off the freeway all day, stuck in traffic on Highway 10 at 11pm, looking for places to park ad nauseum. Schlepping art materials and paraphernalia up stairs and into elevators and down escalators. Driving back and forth to Ojai for long weekends, busy busy, and then back to LA for three days of classes.

On those long weekends, I reveled in my Orchard, sucked in the rarified orangey air. I drew ideas in the dirt with a stick. John Denver crooned in my ear, reminding me… just reminding me.

On an eleven day “Burro Trip” in the high Sierra with the Headmaster of Thacher School and 10 other intrepid hikers, I took my drawing pad, a few pencils and a journal and kept a few notes.


I made a Bisquick Apple Cake, buried in two pie tins in the coals of a hot fire, drank out of a tin mug, led burros, hiked trails, ate Toblarone Bars that taste like Heaven on top of a mountain after an all day hike.

Better, to be out on the trail than stuck in LA traffic. GB

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Studio #5 - The Orange Orchard

Fortunately, the 1985 Ojai Fire burned around the perimeter of the Thacher School campus. When the ashes settled Patsy, our illustrious neighbor, took me for a walk in an orange orchard. Allowing Bob, the blond Labrador, to lead the way, we discussed the fire evacuation.

I said, “We spent two nights on the ground in our sleeping bags in Souel Park. We watched the fire storms leap up and down the hills and by morning we were covered in half an inch of ashes.”

She said, “We dumped the silver in the pool and the furs in the fruit locker and packed small bags, tempted to just dive in the pool and wait the fire out, but Constance waived her stick at me and said, ‘Foolish girl!’ We spent three nights at a friend’s in Santa Barbara and two days cleaning up the silver. The ranch, thank God, is fine. Here we are.”

Pasty proclaimed, “Here we are!” as if showing me a castle, and to me, it was. If her Octogenarian mother, Constance, had been with us, she would have waved one of her sticks, which, by the way, were clear plastic canes filled with plastic flowers matching her colorful outfits. Her close pal, potter Beatrice Woods, had no canes but feather boas and bright red lipstick and, at 85, when I knew her, was an accomplished and incorrigible flirt. A pottery box she had made inspired this be-ribboned chocolate cake.

What became known simply as the Orchard was a little clearing about 20 feet in diameter in the Navel orange trees. In the middle of this clearing stood a dear little shack. I am attracted to shacks. If shacks could talk!

This little beauty leaned ever so slightly to the south, undoubtedly held together with toothpicks and kindling. Slivers of light peaked through the thin and ill-fitting bat and board walls. The screen door didn’t latch, there was rust in the tiny sink.


BUT, there was a sink! And water! And power! And two little rooms, one with a stone perch in the corner, where I put my old wood stove. My workbenches fit perfectly, nestled into each corner. The views: orange trees. The smells: oranges. The world: my little Orchard.

In this clearing in an orange orchard I created a line of sleep and casual wear, inspired by Japanese paper designs. I folded up squares of fabric, dipped it in dye, let it dry, unfolded it, ironed it out and made it into things.


By then, I was redefining my studio, less bookbinding, more arts inspired by the tools, colors and skills learned from bookbinders, so precise.

And, that same summer, I learned how to use an Apple Macintosh computer.

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Studio #4 - The Back Porch

A studio can be anything, anywhere: a room in the house, a corner of a room in the house, a closet in a room in the house, a barn, a garage, a desk by the window, a shack, a kitchen table.
    Ginna Bell Bragg 2003

The Back Porch is barely worth mentioning as Studio #4. But… see 2003 quote from yours truly above. Can’t leave out the Back Porch.

1984. New digs on the Thacher School campus: tiny tinder-box of a house built in 1915, with room on the screened porch to stash a drawing board in the corner and call it a studio. Why not? Views of trees and a rocky little garden and the roof of the Boys’ Dorm, a few special papers and pens and boxes of dyes. A washer and dryer for dying fabric. It was enough.

In a teeny den I called an office, with an IBM Selectric typewriter, an antique desk and wooden stool, I kept a journal and wrote short stories about old women saving the world and taped recipes into binders.

The small kitchen was an extension of Studio #5. Not only did I cook up my usual storm of food, I taught Sumi Painting and served Green tea to two Thacher boys, James and Tom, both studying Kung Fu and looking for an art sensei, which for some reason turned out to be me. They painted bamboo leaves and peonies while I sat on a stool in my dressy silk kimono and read them The Tales of Genji and played Rampal on the boom box. They called me Ikuko Sensei, “Scented Teacher.”

The 1985 Fire was a studio space turning point for GB in Ojai. We were serving fruit soup to two grand dames of Ojai society in our tiny dining room. It was a 110° and the fire watch had begun. Our get-away bags were packed and we served the popovers and chicken salad in a hurry. After a tour through the tiny house and a rushed dinner, Patsy said, “You, my dear, need a studio. Come see me after the fire. I have a shack in an orange orchard for you.” She really said that. “Come see me after the fire.”

We watched the fire scream toward campus over the hills as we evacuated and upon our safe return two days later found marmots in the bathtub looking for water and rats in the Back Porch Studio drawers nibbling my precious rice paper. GB

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Studio #3 - the book studio

Two years after discovering the Carmel Guild of the Book Arts, we had enough knowledge, and without doubt plenty of materials since enthusiastic trips to Flax and Britex and Ganes Bros & Lane filled our cars with creative loot, and plenty of hubris, we opened the book studio in the Barnyard in Carmel, California.

Floyd, our buddy from Salinas, brought us whitewashed barn wood for the interior walls. We sanded and sanded, exposing artistic scratchings, love notes, hearts with arrows and messages from the past.

We and the other fifteen artists with reduced square footage rent were the monkeys in the Barnyard zoo, a public arena with regular hours where we must behave like merchants, not artists, do our art and be willing to
commune with customers about whatever it was we were creating, scraping, sewing.

From the lush Barnyard gardens, let’s walk up the open stairs to a red tiled hallway. Lean over the dutch door, observe us at work in 1976 at the workbench with a tiny  hammers tamping the soft white threads of hand bound books flat onto book boards. Or looking out the back window at the Stuyvesant Fish Ranch, an open vista of green hills that mark the entrance to Carmel Valley, stirring a pot of fish glue.

The pounding and the fishy aroma propel our quilting artist neighbor out of her digs to the front door of the book studio. She flings the door open and bustles past the phantom me and gives us a piece of her mind regarding our noisy and smelly activities before she whirls around and floats back to her studio to bury herself among the protective and muffling piles of fabrics. She nicknamed us the “Polished Apples.” We never knew why why.








Look. I still have the sign, painted by yours truly in one of my favorite fonts of all times, Legende. We had the chop made in Chinatown San Francisco. Loosely translated, it says “a place where two young women make books.” We hope it says that.

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Studio #2 - The Back Bedroom

In 1974 a friend and I cooked up a plan to write, illustrate and somehow produce children’s books. Research led to All Saints Day School in Carmel Valley where the Guild of the Book Arts met for summer classes. We jumped at the chance to learn about bookbinding and making paper and the fine art of calligraphy.

My studio of the moment was squeezed into a back bedroom of our new house, having graduated from the “far out little pad” down the road. Soon, we collected equipment and paraphernalia - book presses, drawing boards, trays for paper making and decorating. We dove into the pool of bookbinding so deeply that the idea of writing for children was set aside and instead we made beautiful  books: she studied antiquarian book repair and gold tooling and the closets filled up with Moroccan leather and gold leaf and paste. I focused on Japanese bindings, journals and scrap books, stacking the cupboards with rice paper and dyes and silk. Papers of all kinds draped over dowel rods hung along the wall like towel racks.

An electric hot plate burbled with a pot of fish glue which wafted fumes like anchovy pizza through the house. I could hear rain drizzling and, beyond the garden, the rush of the Carmel River.
We harmonized with John Denver: Country Roads and Annie’s Song and Sunshine on my Shoulders. We gossiped and shared secrets and talked about men and ate grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup and laughed and cried and created beauty with an ever growing assortment of materials.
It was powerful good fun in that back bedroom studio with our two workbenches facing each other under the window. In the winter, the wood stove in the living room and mugs of herb tea kept us warm while we examined and took apart old books and put them back together again.

Although I can say that I wrote my first book at nine years old (How to Be Obnoxious in Twenty five Easy Lessons - more on that in another post) and I have been in love with books and reading since long before that, those two seasons of classes at The Guild of the Books Arts took my love of books to a new level, where it is not just the contents, but the containers that inspire.

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