Door Stop

 Door Stop. Oh, I wish I could remember this guy's name. (Maybe some of you will help me?) A friend of Darryl and Bobby, in the graduate landscape program around 2011. He came to Cal with lots and lots of hands-on professional experience--that is, he knew irrigation systems, berms, and how to build them. Which gave him a certain down-to-earth practical edge--but also imposed limits as to how much he could fly with his imagination on its own. (Graduate school being somehow a combination of the two.) I think he sensed this, for in VS 280 (the graduate seminar where everyone starts with one word a week--supplied by Tony--and does a project, based on the word, but otherwise completely open-ended, which we then look at as a group the week following. That's how the class worked, and it tended to attract students who were interested in finding out just where they might go. A kind of real-time, physically-based creative psychoanalysis (some of our discussions, in any case). And often quite funny, depending on the group...)

So, this fellow could produce good work, but it was hard to him get past a certain literal element--his very strength in any professional setting--and I remember that our conversations sometimes foundered on this. But, you know, everyone learns differently, and at their own pace--and I think that the piece you see here--his final project for the term, which he very much wanted to give me--said I could use it as a door stop--beautifully represents the struggle. And maybe his own way of transcending it. For the craft is certainly impressive--made in the shop, he knew just how to cut screen and bind wire--but then the idea of a cage or container--river stones, after all--the solidity of all he'd come from, bound up in this container, and in the end, handed over to the professor...

Which meant that he was ready to move on and fly on his own...!

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