Skylar helped us figure out an economical way to build the metal frame and Randy Brill executed the router carving. Then Patrick and Marcus kept warm on a winter afternoon by digging 40″ holes and trying to get the whole thing leveled out in three directions.

Reports from our lone resident were that the shower was warm in the mild November weather –but not long lasting and hot.  I’m not sure if a long hot shower is even possible with a solar shower in November (average temps are in the low 50’s in the day), but it would be good to know if using the black hose is a better or worse strategy then using a black water tank.  Anyone out there have any good answers for this?

Among the new amenities currently underway at the Wagon Station encampment are composting toilets. Being total novices to the world of composting, we thought we’d start with simple toilets that use five gallon buckets to collect the poop, then composting it in an official composting area closer to the future vegetable garden. The toilet enclosures were actually a lot of fun to make – we started out with a minimal plan and a pile of wood, but turned out pretty stylish!

The composting bins were conceptualized by Ari (and built once by dry stacking) and then remade with mortar by David Baker.  Later on they will get a coat of white paint.  According to the Humaneur Handbook, the “compost” should age for a year before we use it – hence the two sided bins.  Cement block was used for the bins in order to keep out rodents (later lids will be added) and to keep moisture and humidity in.

Part two of studio catchup features of “Lay of My Land” – a new sculpture for my September show at Regen Projects.  It’s a sculpture of A-Z West, split up into sections representing the individual parcels that has been painstakingly acquired and added together to create a seemingly united whole.   When the frame arrived from Chuck’s place up in Baldy it was BIG.  So big, that it caught all of us off-guard, but fortunately the new studio swallowed it up perfectly.

Dan came down from Portland for a social visit and ended up making rocks, and Jim came out from New York and made models, and Neal and Erin came out from LA with endless heavy dusty bags of hydrocal stuffed in their cars. And somehow in the end it all came together.  Now, believe it or not, as I post this I’m actually now sitting in Stockholm where we are now making other variation of this sculpture for a show at Magasine 3 (that opens next week!)  but that part comes later….

In the “clean” space I’ve been working like crazy on a few more billboards:  two text works “Blissful Productivity” and “Epic Meaning”  (the color of Epic Meaning is a lot better then it appears in the photo) and a landscape image based on a photo I took from the top of the hill behind my house.