My home, formerly a simple rectangular grocery store, has interior buttresses every 12 feet, one of which juts into the center of the living room – which I “hid” with a sculptural tree, co-designed with my natural plaster artist friend, Gavio.

I collected and finished the branches and chose their exact locations.  Gavio built the trunk out of other branches, and together we plastered over them, then Gavio finished it with a milk casein glaze colored with natural earth pigments.

Created during my natural plaster artistry training, May 2006, this entailed multiple layers of differently colored clay, finished with white lime plaster, then my design carved into various layers.

This staircase of stone was created with salvaged stone of various sorts, integrated with small terrace gardens, inside curving walls.  Built for a friend.  The staircase leads to a very beautiful, mostly-underground casita, built of almost entirely salvage materials.  This photo was taken about six years after the staircase was built.

Brickwork outside my kitchen door abuts an adobe patio, lined with stones and bricks which hold back the deluge of spring floods when they overflow the concrete-covered tank which harvests rainwater from the roof.  The swale (shallow depression along the patio) hugs the terrace gardens and waters the roots of the fruit trees.