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Professor Donald Fortescue
Department of Wood/Furniture, California College of the Arts
Spring 2003

In mid-March 2003, I along with three other faculty and fifteen students from the Wood/Furniture Program at the California College of the Arts trekked to FOR-SITEs Artist Residency in Nevada City, California for three days of exploration, learning and creativity.

As the Wood/Furniture Program Director, I had been searching for several years for a location where students could learn to appreciate first hand the organic properties of wood. I wanted students to fell a tree and split it open using the time honored methods of the woodsman using axes, froes, wedges, a bodgers benches, bowsaws, drawknives and spokeshavesto help the students develop an understanding of how the wood moves and behaves. The intent is to inform students awareness of the life of the woodits history of sustenance, growth and form within a particular site and moment in time. I also wanted the students to learn what it is to rough it in the bush, to work collaboratively in the rain and sun, to stop work to watch storm clouds inch their way up the forested valley.

This may all sound very romantic, but I firmly believe that when working in the natural world only an enlightened and multifaceted understanding of our interactions with the materials will enable artists and designers to create with maturity, responsibility and originality.

On the first night we set up an outdoor projector and watched the documentary Rivers and Tides. Being so exposed to the elements of mist and wind while watching the documentary was an ideal way to ready the students for the possibilities and challenges of making art in the natural world. Through the next two days of clear sunshine interspersed with thunderstorms and hail, the students built a series of handmade benches for FOR-SITEs amphitheater, and a large meandering wall and arch of interwoven, serpentine manzanita branches that frame the walkway to the proposed site of the Artist Residency.

What the students learned about the relationship of art and the natural world, and their place as beings within this relationship is unquantifiable. We plan to return to the site next spring, and hope to continue to return annually. The work of the students will grow and change over time as the site and the living conditions evolve.

We feel honored to be FOR-SITEs first educational project, and are grateful to the Foundation, Cheryl and Dan, and the extended family of people who work with FOR-SITE for this magical and resoundingly successfully experience.

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