The melting snow and rainstorms have made the falls really flow in the past few weeks!

Dear Friends,

This month I want to talk about creativity and serendipity.

During one of my courses in undergrad at Penn State, a professor showed us a film called “The 5 Obstructions”. The premise is that the Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier makes a documentary where he challenges his friend and mentor, an older filmmaker he deeply admires, Jorgen Leth, to remake an experimental short film from his early days “The Perfect Human”. Leth has to remake the film five times, and each time von Trier gives him “an obstruction” or a set of rules and challenges. The challenges become more outrageous each time. In one challenge no shot must last longer than 12 frames, in another he must make the film “in the worst place in the wold but not show that place onscreen”, and in another he must remake the film as a cartoon. It is as if von Trier is trying to trip up his idol, force him into making a flop. Instead of course, with each limitation, Leth’s creativity shines, and each new version of the film is more fascinating than the last and more interesting than the original.

I have never watched the film again, I had to look it up to get the filmmakers names and details of the challenges correct, but I have thought of it so many times in the twenty years since I saw it because it resonated so deeply with me. So much of creativity is reaction to the limitations of the circumstances of the moment. Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say, and the human brain is wired towards coming up with creative solutions that address the problem in front of us with the materials at hand.

I cannot overstate how much of the design process of this house has been dictated by limitations and opportunities outside of our control. This is not a house that was designed in a vacuum, simply saying, I want this and I want that. So much of the designing and redesigning has been reactions to encounters with the reality of what is in front of us. The topography of the land, the building permit code rules, the cost of materials, and encounters with sweet deals. An artist might have a vision of what they want to make, if they had time and assistants and huge studio and a massive materials budget. Instead, they make something else with the time and materials they do have, and it may be much smaller, but it is quite possibly more magical. As a builder, you might have a vision of what you would do in an ideal world, but instead you ask yourself, what is the coolest thing that I can do with what I already have on hand and what I can get inexpensively? When I was doing my tile projects, it was just like that. I had an idea about how I wanted to do some cool patterned tiles reminiscent of the Spanish Colonial style that I love so much from my time in central America. I very quickly learned that these tiles cost upwards of $15 per square foot, impossible for me to do. So instead I came up with designs that used the cheapest tiles I could get, some new from Lowes, most second-hand, leftover tiles from other people’s renovation projects, expensive tiles sold cheaply to me in small quantities, and saved my most expensive investment in buying a bulk batch of “factory seconds” from a handmade tile company in Mexico. I could work around chipped edges and small imperfections in glazes, and spread out the pretty tiles among the plain tiles. In the end, I love my very custom tile projects, cobbled together as they are, so much more than any expensive designer tile.

This month’s feature project comes from another one of these serendipitous moments where an opportunity emerged to get a special material inexpensively. Then, the idea and design arose from the material, not the other way around. One of the many things that my dad brings to the table in this project is that because of his decades as a woodworker and carpenter in this area, he knows every source for wood. Every lumber yard, every small business and large business. Two years ago, Gary was visiting Zook’s Lumber, an amish sawmill in Brush Valley that we get wood from frequently, to pick up some basic boards for an earlier project.  With his sharp eyes, he happened to notice a stack off to the side of exceptionally wide rough sawn white pine boards, ranging from 16 inches to over 22 inches wide. Asking if they were reserved for someone or available for purchase, he learned that they were not designated for anyone and that they were also not an extra expense price just because they were uniquely wide, and were the same old per square foot price of any boards of that thickness. Without having any idea of what we might use them for, he immediately swooped them all up, knowing that we would do many cool projects that showed them off!

Thus was born the project in this month’s newsletter, our finished guest basement. I’ll elaborate in that section of the newsletter, and you will see how truly huge a 22 inch wide board really looks! And, to keep with the theme, my nature feature will also be white pine! There are many beautiful, mature white pines on my property that hold a special place in my heart.

Wishing you all creative opportunities and time in nature observing the miracles of spring (and lord knows we all need such healing distractions to stay sane in the breakneck pace of acceleration chaos and tragedy that is our political climate!) Nature and art, nature and art, nature and art.

Thank you all for following along and writing me your thoughts and reflections in response, they are always so welcome.

All of my love,

Elody

P.S. Speaking of creativity! Locals please come to my art opening at the Bellefonte Art Museum on Sunday, April 12th! I have my first solo show in several years up in the Community Gallery on the second floor. The show is up all of the month of April and the reception is on the second Sunday of the month from 12:00-4:30pm. Please come and say hi and see some of my new-ish artwork in person!

P.P.S. VIDEOS: Somehow, winter still continues. Here is a very long video of the snows coming and going in the last month and springtime teasing us for brief moments in between the cold, here on FB and Insta.

Prepping for my show at the Bellefonte Art Museum, including framing help from dad!

Above: The walk-out side of the guest basement with the new wall treatment of gigantic pine boards, pine trim, and live-edge cherry window sill/bar-top. Can’t wait to use it!

Feature Project: The Guest Basement

Did any of you happen to notice, in one of last month’s videos of my installing those LED ceiling lights, how strange the walls in the background were, covered in messy horizontal strips of drywall? If you did, you have a good eye! What you were seeing is the preparation for this wall treatment project utilizing those huge pine boards I mentioned in the introduction.

I don’t remember when exactly the idea came up, but quite awhile ago, after we got those huge boards, my dad had the idea of using them to create a faux log cabin interior in our guest basement. We knew it would not fool anyone or actually look like a real 17th century farmhouse or cabin, but we also knew it would be great way to really show off these boards. In December of 2025 we finally got to work on the guest basement, starting with the ceilings, and then moving on to this idea for the walls and working on the whole process from late December until mid-February.

We measured our walls and went up to the pile of boards sitting in my barn for two years and re-stacked them, measuring each one’s length and width. Then, we came up with a design for which board widths would go where and how much space would go in between them so it would work out pretty well with the outlets, windows, and doors. Ultimately, we used mostly the smaller boards, and had to buy some (much more normal and easy to get) 12 inch wide boards) to make it work out, using mostly 14 and 16 and 18 inch boards with one row of 22s. This means we have lots of 20 inch boards and some other sizes leftover for a future project! Had we used all wider boards, it would have only been four boards to cover the whole wall, but this way were were able to use five, which looked better visually.

Then, we marked the pattern out on the wall with a chalkline and hung strips of drywall. The nicer strips would show between the boards, and we put strips behind the middle of where the actual boards would go too just for support. We could have just purchased new drywall sheets and covered the whole walls, but this way we were able to do the entire basement with the random scraps of drywall we had not yet thrown away from drywalling the whole guest side. This material was not only free, it was saving most of it from the landfill. Then, I primed the strips of drywall that would show, and coated them with a texture paint to make it look more like chinking, and then a final coat of regular white house paint. And then, we hung the boards! Which was fun and challenging and so fast to cover the walls, the prep-work took way more time than hanging the big boards because each one covered so much ground. Finally, trim around the windows and other detailing! And done! It looks marvelous, so bold and warm. We still have to address the floor, hang some doors, and finish some other projects like some built-in-counters and shelving, and I need to apply varnish to the amazing live-edged cherry windowsill/bartop and the yellow pile railing on the basement stairs that my dad just built, but it is very close to completion!

This space is my largest open area in the whole house. My vision for it is to be very multi-purpose and transformable. When I am hosting workshops, it will be our indoor classroom space for gathering, lectures, rainy weather, and any projects that can’t be done outdoors. Otherwise, it can be a gathering space for parties, a dining, room, a bar, a game room. Whatever it needs to be! I can’t wait.

TIMELAPSE VIDEOS: I have a great video compilation of this whole basement boards project, here on FB and Insta.

Above: Walls going up in back of basement. You can see the salvaged strips of drywall that are underneath the boards. Below: Same area, finished!

Above: Magnificent white pines on the east side of my yard catching the evening sunlight. Below: The “Sundial” Tree counting down (or should I say up?) to the final sunset.

Nature Spotlight: White Pine (Pinus strobus)

Pinus strobus, commonly called the eastern white pine, northern white pine, white pine, and soft pine is a large pine native to eastern North America. I chose to feature the white pine this month because the connection between the building project and the land is never more clear as when you are working with a material—in this case unusually wide white pine boards—that you look at its living form every day. My property is blessed with many beautiful, mature white pines, all around my house and the edge of the clearing that is my yard and into the woods beyond. In the years that we have been building, long before there was any indoor kitchen, we have had hundreds of campfires and outdoor cookout dinners over the wood fires, and we would watch the evening light climb its way up the tallest white pine (visually tallest anyway, it has a boost from the topography) until the final rays of the fading sunlight grace just the tippy top of the tree, our own personal sundial clock counting down the sunset. I see white pine trees or close up branches out of every window of my house, I wake up to white pine branches from my bed and I see them out my studio windows when I glance up from my computer when I am teaching my online classes over zoom. They are, undoubtably, the most present tree in my life now.

They are also dominant in the greater northeastern and Appalachian regions. The eastern white pine is the tallest tree in the Northeastern U.S. (with tulip poplars sometimes competing for that title) and can reach heights of 150 feet or more, with mature trunks often reaching 4 feet in diameter. Before the over-harvesting of the lumber industries of the 18th-19th centuries, old growth white pine forests were common. Even today, a few trees are known to be over 400 years old, and many more are over 200 years old.

Young white pines clearly show their tidy and symmetrical growth pattern with tiers of of horizontal branches extending from the straight trunks like perfect delicate wagon wheels stacked with spacers. Older trees drop many of their branches, especially lower in the tree, leading to unique irregularities of shape and structure. White pines produce long, slender pine cones and rely on the wind both for pollination and seed distribution. The branches bear silky, 3-to-5 inch-long bluish-green, filament-like needles that are attached in bundles of five needles.

This brings me to history time! And here you thought we weren’t going to get into politics this month. But hang tight, this is a beautiful story.

The Haudenosaunee (The Iroquois Confederacy) used "the tree of the Great Long Leaves" as the central symbol of their multinational confederation, calling it the "Tree of Peace". The five-clustered needles are representative of the five original Haudenosaunee nations (it later became The Six Nations).

The story begins with ongoing conflict between the original five nations of the Haudenosaunee. A man from the Huron nation, known as the Peacemaker, spoke to the leaders of each of the five nations, convincing them that forging an alliance would not only end these conflicts, but make them stronger than the individual nations and provide greater protection from outside forces. The resulting Great Law of Peace, Gayanesshagowa, is the result of this agreement between the original five nations: the Mohawk, the Oneida, the Onondaga, the Cayuga, and the Seneca who formed the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. When the leaders of the five nations of the confederacy agreed to form their alliance, they met beneath the sheltering branches of an eastern white pine tree, which became known as the Great Tree of Peace.

The Great Law of Peace guides the Haudenosaunee to strive for unity and to reach consensus on important decisions that benefit each nation as well as the entire Confederacy. Formed in 1142, the Iroquois Confederacy is considered the oldest living participatory democracy on earth.

Much is made of the connection between early American Democracy and the political models of Ancient Greece, but it was also modeled on the Haudenosaunee. “In 1988, the U.S. Senate paid tribute with a resolution that said, ‘The confederation of the original 13 colonies into one republic was influenced by the political system developed by the Iroquois Confederacy, as were many of the democratic principles which were incorporated into the constitution itself.’”

I love my big beautiful old white pine trees. I love the idea of a government of the people and by the people and for the people. I believe in the American experiment, and I love this big beautiful messy country that I live in. I believe in peace, I believe in cooperation, I believe in collective decision-making by the people. I don’t support this administration or this war. The majority of Americans also do not, and in fact this war has one of the lowest approval ratings at the beginning of a conflict in modern history (check out this cool article about this topic if you love statistics and data visualized into nice graphs.) Check your documents, make sure all your ID is up to date, make the effort to vote. Democracy is precious and worth fighting for. Make sure your voice is heard.  

In a future newsletter, I will tell you the story of the connection between my land and the Iroquois leader Logan, but that is another story for another time.

Additional Sources:

https://www.pbs.org/native-america/blog/how-the-iroquois-great-law-of-peace-shaped-us-democracy

https://cornellbotanicgardens.org/white-pine-the-great-tree-of-peace

Above: White pine needles and “wheel-spoke” growth pattern of young branches.

Above: Delicate young understory white pines versus tall mature white pines that have shed most of their lower branches. Below: Portraits of my yard’s perimeter, with white pines and other trees against marvelous summer skies in 2021/22!

P.S. I never really showed my kitchen totally finished, not just the lights or the cabinets, but it fully set up and in use. Here it is, glowing with afternoon sunlight in early March.

Sirona Falls