In 16 Months...

We moved to southern Sweden 16 months ago. That's the biggest news. 

There have been a multitude of chapters under this experience and I have been remiss in writing about it. Maybe when one is deep into a new experience there is still limited perspective and it's a bit tricky to pick apart the exciting from the crazy.

The Why.

We decided to take a leap of faith and see what living in Europe could afford our family, especially our son, who just turned into a teenager. Neither one of us had lived in this region of Sweden (Skåne) before. I lived in Stockholm when I was young, but it's really quite different. Skåne, the flatlands, the deep south, is the breadbasket of the country. The city we moved to is Lund, famous for its university, and filled with charm, students and professors from all over the world. More than half the population is under 30 and everyone speaks at least two languages. An intellectual epicenter surrounded by farming. 

There is a stout public transportation system and Lund is next to Malmö, a larger gritty city, that has a thriving art scene, music and good food. An even larger hub, Copenhagen, Denmark, is a 45 minute commuter train ride away. 

Lund and the vicinity is indeed a great place for kids/teens to grow up. It's safe, progressive, easy to get around, lots to do, and and kids here have autonomy that would not be possible in Taos. 

The Flybrary has a new permanent home in Portugal. Thanks in part to this relocation we managed our relocation. I like being close to my favorite creations..pictured below.

Logistics.

The actual logistics around a move like this from a small rural mountain town to a larger city in northern Europe is complex. Managing large scale sculpture projects, moves and house-builds over the years definitely helped with the thousands of details involved with this kind of independent relocation. Unlike most people we meet, who work for a company which handles the basic logistics such as schools, rental housing, visas, registration, healthcare and shipping; we did it all ourselves. It took several reconnaissance missions and in-depth planning which we had been working on for about a year before we even made the move. We even brought our dog.

And yet, upon arrival, there was so much more "adulting" to do and I feel I am barely keeping up with the amount of digital paperwork it takes to restart a life in a new place. Sweden runs a very transparent banking system, and is pretty much a cashless society. Those are HUGE differences and end up impacting everything from how to buy a coffee, pay rent or to how to register a car. 

I basically use my smartphone for everything-paying for everything, food, bills, art and building materials, train and bus, anything involving a store, insurance, healthcare, my sons allowance. 

Yes, it seems to work well, (it's like internet magic), and yet a part of me feels that it's a vulnerable system. What happens if the system is hacked, compromised or there's a cosmic disturbance? I mean have you listened to Radiolab's episode: Bit Flip?

One day I'll write about the how to move to Sweden/Europe on another blog; it could indeed be helpful for future expats.

The Emotional Ride.

Moving to another place has a trajectory of emotions that are well documented and more or less accurate. Of course the more different the place, the bigger the effect. Add pre-teen/teen kids to the equation and it can get quite tricky. 

It was tricky. Culture shock is a process, and the only way out is through. 

We are all going through the adjustment with cultural differences, language barriers, the latitude change at our own pace. I feel pretty good now, and I see that Kodiak is finally also getting his feet planted. Christian is past the so called "honeymoon phase" and is restlessly working his way through the remaining phases of adaptation.

With the short perspective I have now, I would say it's harder than I thought. 

Life is life wherever you are though, it's simply more difficult if you can't understand the ways.

Midway.

Midway into this leap of faith, we decided to make yet another leap- which is stop paying rent and buy a property instead. This has been a fail safe way for us to invest our humble earnings with sweat equity into future dividends. 

We learned the how-to-buy a property in Sweden by trial and error, and wow, I can't believe we managed to pull this one off. Like most all things in life, if you lean into the completely unpredictable roadmap with your eyes wide open, you end up where you need to go, somehow.

We ended up with a traditional Southern farm house, actually three buildings on almost an acre of land just outside Lund. It's old, and run down, kind of perfect for people like us, and best of all it has a shop building! Old in Sweden means over 170 years old..the beams in the building are likely that old and the two huge maple trees flanking the entrance to the property where probably planted right around then too.

I just had two young bad-ass women arborists climb and trim the trees, to asses their health and they guessed they were over 150 years old. They trimmed the trees, with chainsaws and hand saws in an active hail storm no less. 

The Farm.

Of course after we bought the property, we decided to just renovate the bathroom...then the kitchen, and then it somehow extended in to the entire house, including opening up the second story, new wood floors, exposing and rehanging the beams, new plumbing, new electric, fixing a mold issue; it was extensive. 

Where there is a vision, there's a way.

We learned a ton about building and renovating, and modernizing an old Swedish brick farm house though. Good skills to have! 

Now the space is how we love it, and it's a really sweet home for us. We moved all our books, the newly painted piano, and other random stuff from Taos into our new space and it feels like a new home. We have only really been living in this house for four months, so it will take some years to fill it with memories with friends.

Next we are focused on the shop building. We moved all the inherited crap, and our stuff out of the shop building and dispersed it into several other out buildings, sheds and the middle building. The previous owners had a mechanics business out of the space, so we inherited a car lift and all kinds of random car mechanic tools and parts. Again, kind of perfect for us, as we can repurpose much of this for artistic projects.

We sectioned off a a bit of the middle building for a wood shop- which will help with the renovation of the shop building. Basically we are blowing out the low ceiling and making it a larger space so we can have a taller space to build and have a gantry crane in the shop. Here's a short video of Christian at work..

Renovation is slow moving as it's generally dark and cold at this latitude in winter. The shop is unheated and it needs some serious TLC. We are going to insulate and paint and repair the ancient cracking walls- all in due time. I am trying to be ok with going slower (not easy for me)...

We hope to finish the shop in the next few months, and outfit the shop with the basic tools and keep setting up spaces to become work spaces for us. My days vacillate between a deep reckoning of all of the amazing work spaces we left behind and just getting it going in our new home. Those are the completely crazy and exciting parts to this puzzle. 

We may be crazy.

The broad brushstroke plan.

The whole plan was to provide more opportunities for our teenager, and to experience a new way of life in a highly progressive country in the middle of Europe. So here we are in our new base of operations, seeing if it will hold us and our creative visions through Kodiaks' high school years. Once he graduates high school in Sweden he has access to FREE universities all over Europe. 

We are not the first, and surely wont be the last to try this out. We have been fortunate to be able to hold on to our shop property in Taos as well, a place that will always feel deeply like my hearts home. The mesa and I met in my early 20's and I love that land like no other.  

Race Against Time.

This is the only real hiccup to the plan above. There is still much hard labor to make our place work for us and sometimes it does feel a bit like a race against time. The time I'm suddenly more concerned about is the small and less small aches and pains that come with age. I have used my body hard all my life, built many homes, smithed many railings, fabricated many large heavy sculptures and hung from many circus apparatus'. That's what I do. My body is complaining more lately, and I'm trying to navigate this situation gracefully. I'm really not that old, but I guess not unlike an athletes body, mine is older than my years. 

I know I'm in good company here too, so working with it...I'll be an adaptation queen by the time I'm done.

More to come soon!

The Duke's Garden

 In the past few years, many art opportunities dried up, especially if they entailed a live audience. We saw festivals postpone then cancel their cultural art and music events all around the world. That's when people like us get really get creative, and sometimes it works. 

Burning Man cancelled two of its live annual burns, committing to trying it on a virtual platform. Nothing like the real interactions though, and we all know it.. but somewhere in there, new connections where forged, affording artists like myself unconventional venues to show and sell their work in. Out of these new alliances formed an exhibit called Radical Horizons, the Art of Burning Man at Chatsworth.  And that is how the Flybrary got itself onto a truck, then a container ship and then to a garden in the Dales of Derbyshire, England. 

This is the photo from the Chatsworth website...

It is on exhibit at the Chatsworth House, the home of the Duke and Duchess of Derbyshire. The Duke is an art collector, and academic and can be heard and seen in many interviews with contemporary artists such as Kehinde Wiley, worth checking out here.  

The estate and gardens date back to 1549, in the sole hands of the Cavendish family. The house and its gardens have changed significantly from each generation of Dukes and Duchesses, some being more intent on designing the rolling hills, moving the river and planting a lavish gardens, others collecting the cutting-edge art of the times, like Rembrandt's, Picasso's and and neoclassical sculptures which are of course now national treasures. 

Christian has a great in-depth blogpost on the artwork at the Chatsworth House for view here.

The modern meets the classical in the gardens as well, with sculptures and architecture all around. Above is the Flybrary as it arrived at the estate. 

The Chatsworth House is magnificent, in a royal estate kind of way, everything over the top, similar to Versailles in Paris. It contains a plethera of artwork; paintings, sculptures, furniture, tapestries, all depicting a time past, a cultural historical saga of Colonial Britain. It also, to my amazement, is home to some of the most modern invigorating art of this time, completely interspersed with the old works. As you walk room to room you see the old with the new, fitting together perfectly, to tell the story of the world past and present. It's truly exciting to see a collection as diverse and relatable.

On the 105 acres of rolling hills, trees and the winding river Derwent, the estate opens its property to hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. I arrived with my family, and a star crew of three to meet the Flybrary in March. 

We spent the next week, setting up the Flybrary with the competent help of many Chatsworth crew, and joined several other Burning Man art teams, artists and coordinators for dinner and drinks in the evenings at a local Pub. It was as amazing as it sounds. 

There was a bit of a post pandemic adjustment we all had to undergo to learn to be around so many people and speak so much without completely succumbing to anxiety. Turns out the world is still moving fast, and jumping back on to the social merry-go-round can feel a bit clumsy. I think we did ok. 

My crew was truly a joy, not only to see again after many years but to work with such well tempered able bodied people is an honor. Of course they are all my good friends as well, amongst the few people I would want to be with at the end of the world as we know it. 

Shout out to my crew: Christian and Kodiak for having my back, Terril and Brian- of course you two have common history!!, and Cedar for being game to never ending crazy far flung adventures.

The true Northern English weather in March...

The Flybrary now stands, overlooking the beautiful river Derwent, inviting the public with inquisitive eyes, gazing upwards as its thoughts and dreams fly out into the wind.

The Flybrary and a cadre of other Burning Man sculptures are currently on exhibit until October. Go out into the world and see them if you can!

The Radical Horizons exhibit has gotten a lot of press(!!), and here are links to some:

The Guardian UK

TimeOut

BBC News

House and Garden

GQ (10 Coolest Things of the Week*)

Vogue

Tatler

The Winding Road of Unpredictability, aka C'est la Vie.

 After a gruelingly long year of "online" / homeschooling it finally ended with our son going back to school for a few weeks and available Covid vaccinations. A *sigh* of relief all around. Yay for science!

I had committed to taking on Kodiak's schooling during the "lockdown" as well as his best friend Marcelo's. We created a two student home-school routine including: journaling in cursive, vocabulary tests with hot chocolate and marshmallow prizes, history lessons, making books and reading stories. Of course there was recess which involved clocking many hours on the trampoline. That trampoline gets First Prize for favorite activity. The kids also had 1.5 hours of online school a day and plenty of homework which we stumbled through together. 

Much of this was very rewarding, and some of it very difficult. Anyone who has attempted to teach their own kids will know what I mean. At first it was easy and the boys were very willing to learn and go with the flow. After all, the world during the beginning of Covid was quite uncertain, there was a brewing political crisis and there was fear in the air. We sailed through those rough seas, and made it out a bit battered with a few holes in our sails and tattered rigging. But we were still afloat.

By Springtime it was getting harder, the pushback from my own child was at maximum, and I was worn out. Luckily the schools re-opened and the boys got to socialize with other kids in person and be in an actual resource-filled classroom with their awesome and super competent teacher Miss Kelly.

We all knew we needed a break in the Summer...but what to do on a tight budget after a practically non-earning year? Since we make most of our income through festivals, it was (and still is) tight for us. 

Normally we try to go back to Europe, to visit w/ family and enjoy the art and culture so easily available on the other side of the pond. That ended with some research, as cross Atlantic airline tickets had actually not gone down during Covid...

We decided that maybe road-tripping in the States could be a good option instead.

We found a neighbourhood deal on a beater VW Vanagon, complete with a blown engine and every mouse on the mesa. It had been used as storage for years, and needed some attention. We just did not know how much attention...

This happened in May. The next 7 weeks, Christian worked tenaciously on putting in a new used engine (twice)(the first one died shortly after install, so he got yet another), a new exhaust system (which he made by himself), new wiring harness, new rims and tires, new front axles, new hoses, brakes, fixing the gas tank, new pop-top, lights and it goes on and on. He basically built a Vanagon from scratch. When he wasn't under the damn thing he was buried in online Vanagon forums asking how-to questions and ordering parts with expedited shipping. 

Meanwhile I worked hard evicting all evidence of mice on the inside by removing all that I could, including a non-working fridge which had housed the better part of a colony. I thoroughly washed everything on the inside, including curtains, what was left of the upholstery, the seats the covers etc. Unfortunately, I can still sniff out some old mouse, so I think I need to revisit the deep clean later.

We were both working really hard on getting the Vanagon ready for the road, and were delayed three times, all for pretty serious mechanical reasons. 

We were still unsure where we were going as many plans had changed due to new Covid restrictions (in Baja) to the cruel reality of the climate crisis manifesting in massive wildfires across the North Western United States as well as a brutal heat wave in Southern California. One thing we agreed on, whatever route, all roads would lead to the ocean. 

Then we packed, situated our sweet house-sitter, and it seemed incredulous, but we managed to hit the road!

That was awesome!

We made it two days Northbound in the pretty idyllic setting in Northern Colorado, when.....the Vanagon lost reverse and would only drive 20 mph. This is also known as a blown transmission. Ironically that was the only part that Christian had not worked on, other than new fluids, as it came to us with a supposed working transmission. 

So there we were, the three of us, and our new cute monster-of-a-puppy Griselda, a dead Vanagon in a pretty nice camping area by a river. 

Christian and I, attempting to out-run inevitable disappointment, tried to find another tranny semi-locally, that he would then heroically put in with the few tools he brought with us in the campground. It was a crazy idea. 

As reality slowly settled upon us like a dark raincloud, we realized it was over. Well that was a short trip! The only real highlight after that awakening was the Tesla shuttle Kodiak and I took to the nearest town to get supplies and rent a car for a day. That Tesla was amazing, and I hope Kodiak will make an electric car his first when he can drive. We made the best of that night- and tried not to let our disappointment rule the evening.

Luckily we only made it about 280 miles away from home, so we asked Nonnah to come rescue us, which she graciously did. The next day, Christian drove back up with his friend and a trailer to retrieve the dead Vanagon. They drove up and down in one day, a champion rescue.

Once back home, we all felt deflated. We had gambled all our energy and money into this Vanagon so the failure was palpable. 

The next day we went on a hike in the ever beautiful Brazos mountains by our home, fields of wildflowers, aspen groves and mushrooms. Nature was healing for our family. 

This is where our new puppy, Griselda decided to try eating a mushroom...a few hours later she was experiencing the effects, wobbly and lethargic. Turns out most mushrooms are deadly for dogs to ingest- so we all kicked into high gear, inducing vomiting and administering charcoal tablets, and Griselda spent that Sunday night with and I.V. at the vet. If we are lucky she will have avoided liver damage and possible death.

Really? WTF?

I think this may be a sign that I need to stay at home forever and work in the shop.

I feel for Kodiak, who was sooooo excited to go fishing in the ocean. I'm not sure what the lesson is yet, but I trust that this unpredictable winding road will have more than a few highlights awaiting. 

And that was the long and short of it.

C'est la vie.

A Room of One's Own..

 As Covid times have forced us all to become more habitually myopic, it offers a perspective that we may not otherwise experience. For me, it became clear that I needed a space to work creatively that was away from everyone else's space. A space that was not a huge dirty metal shop. A studio.               My studio.  

side view of finished studio

Christian built a man-cave inside a shipping container a few years ago, which is indeed his space, decorated and festooned with all that he loves. He also now has a small dedicated painting studio, which once was the K-shack, (our tiny guest house).  I noticed that these spaces where not only  important for creative output but also for solitary mental space. A room of one's own affords the luxury of contemplation and inspiration, which communal space usually does not. 

When we built our current house, we made it small and open, which is great for our family living. We have very few rooms in the house that actually are sealed by a door. Most rooms are open at the top, or are connected without doors. The whole house feels like a communal multi-use space. Not really a place to be alone. Luckily, we are builders of things, and creating new spaces happens to be something I really love to do...

Slowly things started to move around the land, mainly shipping containers. My old crappy container got emptied and the contents re-arranged. We moved it into its new place. Small footings got poured. Scrap metal was welded together to become beams for the foundation. Dirt and household recycling was used as infill for the floor. 

I torch cut the container wall out and added a new floor. I framed and insulated the whole layout with ample insulation, both batt and rigid. I recycled the window and repaired the frame.

And on it went, for many many months, building on a shoestring budget, with mostly re-purposed materials left over from other builds. Building like this also takes much longer as each step has materials that need site specific modification. Worth it, as the cost goes way down. Who knew that wood and especially plywood would increase in cost by 6 times during Covid? That stark fact made it necessary to use masonite for the container ceiling, and sheetrock for everything else. 

welding the structural support beams 

It was also slow progress due to the fact that I'm facilitating and helping teach 4th grade to my son. Online school is a very time consuming new-normal for me now.

After "school" I try to work in the shop, catching up on my architectural metal work and in the small leftover moments work on my studio. If the days could just have a few more hours.

Christian helped on all facets of the build, making it so much easier to feel like it was progressing at all. He kept me on track and stayed positive when I was overwhelmed and felt defeated by the sheer amount of work that lay ahead. Month after month. Week after week. Eight months from start to move in.

 plywood sheets ready to cover both floors. I insulated the container sub floor with left over batt, rigid spray foam and old clothing scraps.

posing on the new floor inside after rough mudding..

front frame side, with rough sawn Board and Batton

During the Thanksgiving break I finished and installed a snazzy staircase with generous help from Christian, a welcome architectural project in a beautiful condo in town. I had designed and fabricated the railings in this condo well over a decade ago and the new owner found me to help build the new stairs. 

During the break I also finished most of the details for the studio and started the move-in. Which is also a major move-out of various places; containers, long forgotten spaces filled with old art supplies, mystery boxes from a life past. 

I am moving my entire Flybrary book collection into the studio, after doing a serious Playa de-dusting. It's really an extensive and magnificent library of books, and it was one of the inspirations in getting my own space.

As the construction progressed, something ignited psychologically within and I started meticulously curating the space. For some unknown reason I decided to make the space look like a late 19th century Swedish  room. I used wallpaper and ornate trim, to create iconic Swedish wall panels and lots and lots of off-white paint. 

I built a 4" thick bomber insulated door and forged a custom latch-set, and some forged handles and other forged details around the frame of the door. I burned the plywood to accentuate the grain.

I used Board and Batton, matching most exterior Swedish style houses. I used old and some new metal siding for the container.

I had to add a whole other roof on top of the container roof. It had sagged after I cut the entire side panel out, and was listing in the wrong direction for weather, plus it was really rusty.

I put trim everywhere, top and bottom.

I forged lantern hangers for the outside. 

The time I spent on the details are a bit perplexing...but I think that's what makes the difference actually. It's the kind of stuff I notice in other buildings. The details will tell the story in the end.

My main inspiration for the interior was artist Carl Larsson's exquisite watercolors of his own home, detailed with wallpaper designs, period furniture and timeless Scandinavian touches. 

I was gifted antique furniture from my mother-in-law, which with some innovative repair ended up being perfect for the feel of the space. And the pieces are rich with old family memories. The old piano moved in. The Re-store provided a lofty old looking cabinet. I repaired and decorated an old broken chandelier, and found a trestle style work table on Craigs list, straight out of Larsson's paintings. I even painted the used old space heater to match the feel. It's in the details...

 

                 And there it is. I can barely believe it. My own space to sew, draw, paint, and just be.                                 A room of my own!

 

 

CAPSULE (part 2)

The Burn in progress, May of 2021.

Capsule has been up in Arroyo Seco for about a month now, providing a space and a depository for heartfelt notes about this crazy time we are living through together. Many people have left their notes online as well, which in turn have been illustrated by the amazing artist Anthony Carlson and posted on the facebook and instagram pages. 

Capsule is gently lit at night, creating a sweet space to sit and contemplate and an invitation to participate.

At some point in the future we will get to gather again, and at that time we will burn Capsule and watch it transform. The notes will act as kindling for a larger interior fire which in turn will activate the mechanism to open the hands, exposing a new shape and the inner core of the piece.

For Millenia, people have gathered in groups around fires and thrown representations of hopes, dreams, intentions and fears into the fire. The immediate transformation brought on by fire is a powerful representation of a channel to another realm, another place. It changes things.

Yes, fire changes things. As the wildfires rage in the Western States, we are seeing a massively destructive outcome, partially if not entirely due to human negligence and global hubris. We are facing a time when nature is unfolding the consequences of decades of unbridled resource ravaging. These climate related events are now the "new normal". We are now in a spiraling climate crisis we had been forewarned about. It's just the beginning. Reversing this may be close to impossible now, but we still have the chance to stop it from getting worse. And all science points to the bare fact that it will get worse.

It's simple, yet so intricately complicated; we are all connected to this climate crisis in some way. Change is imperative. Change of habits, the way we consume, the way we use resources, the way we live together. The pandemic and the severe climate events can push us to see in new ways, with equity, with a fierce sense of our humanity. We ARE all in this mess together. 

Let's not fear this change, and let's not lose hope. We are a very adaptable species. I want to quote from the informative book "The Future We Choose, Surviving the Climate Crisis" by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac,  "Don't mistake the waves for the current".

We may be in a political typhoon right now, with an agenda that is retroactive in its approach to reality, but I believe in the millions of people who want change, who face the collective current with open eyes and creative solutions. I believe we are the majority. 

As an artist, I hope Capsule can serve to hold some shared hopes, intentions, fears and dreams. Check out the Capsule website if you wish to participate remotely.

Click to see how to participate.

And, I am really looking forward to this burn!

Capsule Taos!

Welcome to Capsule! Christian and I got the green light to build a large scale sculpture for our local community through Seco Live and The Paseo. It's a first on many levels- it's a collaboration between the two of us on all levels of the piece, it's a new sculpture promoted and backed by our favorite local arts and culture organizations, and it's a sculpture addressing our current moment in time. Exciting accolades!

Capsule is an organically inspired mechanical sculpture which responds interactively to our community during this unprecedented time in history.
The community is invited to capture their thoughts on paper and insert the notes directly into the sculpture.
When Capsule burns, the combusting notes will kinetically set the sculpture into motion, causing it to open, exposing its inner core, and revealing a new dynamic shape.
Capsule harnesses the transformative power of fire, not only to literally open itself, but also to send our collective hopes and dreams into the ether.

Behind this effort is a very talented group of people, including the Arroyo Seco Live crew, The Paseo Project, as well as Gizmo Productions, glass artists Alex Abajian, artist and writer Erin Elder, and an impressive web design team. 
Just check out the Capsule web site!

We are encouraging YOU to help literally ignite the project by writing your thoughts down and placing them within the sculpture. For now go to the CapsuleTaos website to participate.

Follow the day to day progress on instagram at #capsuletaos. 

We are currently deep into the build and hope to unveil it in Arroyo Seco in July.

Alex delivering the beautiful handblown glass tines he made.