Confessional - Cathy de Monchaux

Cathy de Monchaux's Confessional is built of copper, steel, glass, limestone and leather. According to Cathy, she wanted to build something which was a sculpture, but only complete when people entered it and started talking inside. The Cass Sculpture Foundation which showcases the work says:

"Her reflective method of working has resulted in a building that is simple, assured and which looks from the outside to be a place without pretension, but with strength of line and solidity of form... Like most of de Monchaux's work, Confessional is secretive: it hints at comfort - here is a place to rest, to recline and to converse. It is quiet inside, away from the hustle of the crowd, but you could easily damage your hand on the spikes which are part of repeated hand shapes forming the decorative screen. The screen itself is a metaphor for all that confuses communication. Is my truth your truth? Do you understand me? Do I know you?"

The screen, pictured below, is a fretwork of rusting steel.

The Woodies by the Ponds

There are very few books aimed at a younger shedworking reader, but Cathy Watts' The Woodies by the Ponds is an honorable exception. Cathy writes at her home in Tortington Priory from her garden office, a Writer's Retreat model from Scotts of Thrapston inspired by Virginia Woolf's writing hut. It also features in the Sussex-based author's book, illustrated by Emma Ball, which focuses on the 'Woodies', tiny folk who travel on the backs of dragonflies and have adventures with the wildlife around the Priory's ponds.
 
Cathy's previous books will also be of interest as they feature the 'Sandies', creatures who live under beachhuts and come out at night to tidy up after humans.
   

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Cathy MacLennan's garden office photography

We've featured Cathy MacLennan's marvellous garden office photography previously on Shedworking and here's another fine example. Here's what she says about it: "Autumnal footpath to my garden studio. The leaves are fluttering down in large numbers on this very blustery day - looks cosy!"

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Garden studio cyanotype print

 

A lovely piece of work by artist, photographer, illustrator and shedworker Cathy MacLennan showing her very attractive garden office in which she works. For those not familiar with the process, cyanotype is "a slow-reacting, economical photographic printing formulation sensitive to a limited near ultraviolet and blue light spectrum... it produces a cyan-blue print used for art as monochrome imagery". There are more examples on Cathy's website and friend of Shedworking Chris Routledge's too.

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Kurt Schwitters' Merz Barn to star at Royal Academy

The Royal Academy of Arts in London will host a major exhibition next year focusing on 20th-century British sculpture and will include a recreation of painter and collageist Kurt Schwitters famous Merz Barn. Schwitters came to the UK after escaping from Hitler's Germany and worked in the Cumbrian shed which he turned into a kind of architectural artwork: the recreated shed will be built by dry stone wallers from Cumbria in the Academy courtyard. Modern British Sculpture runs from January 22 until April 7 2011 and also features the shedlike'Let's Eat Outdoors Today' by Damien Hirst

Thanks to Cathy Dobson for the alert


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Planet Germany

Shedworking reader Cathy Dobson from Red Door consulting in Germany is not only a shedworker, she's written a book about her experiences (not just of shedworking, but also of living and working in Germany). Planet Germany was written from her own shedlike atmosphere, a former pig-sty near Düsseldorf, now a lovely home office. Here's the Amazon blurb:

"After a decade of living in Germany, a chaotic British family makes a New Year's resolution to throw themselves wholeheartedly into the local culture. The process is complicated as the mother is founding a business with a German partner who is convinced that all Brits are both dysfunctional and poorly nourished. The year sees them bumbling through local festivals, getting into scrapes with authorities, and falling foul of the law, all aided and abetted by their eccentric neighbours and posse of cats. This book exposes the crazier side of both British and German culture, examines profound mysteries such as German fortune telling and sauna etiquette, and explains why dachshund owners are the most dangerous people on the planet."

And here's an exclusive extract:

"While we adults eat and the children pick at the stuffing sullenly, the conversation turns to the new business Birgit and I are setting up. We are launching a management consultancy, based in the disused pigsty behind our house which we’ve converted into an office.

We’ve spent the last month preparing everything. The pigsty has had its leaking roof mended, a smart wooden floor has been laid, we’ve re-wired, re-plastered, painted and I’ve even attached a shiny brass door knocker to the gleaming red door. In the run-up to Christmas, we’ve set up our website, installed desks, a server, lap-tops, fax machine, printer. We’re ready to launch.

“It’ll be great fun working from home,” I hazard. “I never used to see much of the children when we were in an office in central Düsseldorf and I always got home so late.”

Birgit looks at me quizzically. I can tell that seeing lots of someone else’s offspring isn’t her idea of a great working environment.

“When we’re at work, you kids will have to avoid playing directly outside the office,” Birgit tells them. “We can’t have our phone calls interrupted by the noise of a dysfunctional English family in the background.”

“Dysfunctional? What do you mean, dysfunctional?” My jaw has dropped open.

“I don’t mean there’s something wrong with your family,” Birgit reassures me. “The English nation per se is dysfunctional. Don’t take it so personally.”

You can buy it here.

Sheds and the Christchurch earthquake recovery

"Our shed has had a good post-earthquake tidy up," blogs Ruth Gardner from Christchurch, with shelving units now firmly attached to walls. With warmer weather the males of the household can sit out there for their pre-dinner beer." Is this a sign that Christchurch is recovering from its earthquake?
Thanks to Cathy Dobson for the alert.
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Kent Haruf: shedworker

Novelist Kent Haruf (Plainsong, Eventide, Benediction) wrote in a fairly straightforward writing shed at his home in Colorado (he is pictured top in front of it, and above is an interior shot) and it was here that he wrote his final book, Our Souls at Night as well as Benediction. There is an excellent piece about Haruf (and the shed) by Chris Outcalt at 5280 Magazine. Here's a snippet:

One step past the doorway of Kent Haruf’s writing shed and everything feels close. The back wall is less than eight feet away, and I can almost reach out and touch the walls on either side of me. The interior walls are draped with mismatched bedsheets, which are tacked to the beams of the structure, concealing a thick layer of insulation. Some of the sheets are pale blue and others are the color of lima beans.

Just to the left of the entryway, there is a small bookcase overflowing with old books. Many of the book jackets have faded and the corners are worn and there are distinct creases along the spines. The top shelf is taken up almost entirely by stories written by Faulkner, and a third of the way down, I notice a short story collection that includes The Bear. Kent’s desk spans most of the length of the back wall; it’s a light wooden desk with three drawers. There is a lamp in the far corner, and a brown suede chair. A large bull skull hangs from a nail to the left of the desk. Cathy told me Kent had hung the skull in his workspace as a reminder to not write bullshit.

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Underground shedworking: go to work in a bunker

This property which has just come on the market is in 2.68 acres of grassland at Bervie Brow, Inverbervie, a two-bedroomed property with a significant shedlike difference: it has an underground structure used in the 1950s as a military command centre. While the estate agents suggest this 9,000 sq.ft bunker which is built on variouslevels could be a mushroom farm, wine store or night club, it would of course be a marvellous underground co-shedworking premises. Here are their details:

Access to the adjoining subterranean structure is from the ground floor along the aforementioned corridor. As stated there is a labyrinth of rooms with the main floor comprising a plant room, kitchen and toilet facilities and 12 other rooms of various dimensions. The main floor area is estimated to be approximately 5625 square feet with the entire outer structure having walls approximately 10ft thick. In the complex there is a room on two levels and from there travelling along the corridors, the walls of which have metres of piping, you encounter huge steel doors leading to the safe room, more accommodation, toilet facilities and kitchen area. The mezzanine floor comprises 9 rooms extending to approximately 3437 square feet.
Thanks to Cathy Dobson for the alert.

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It started in a shed

Technology giant HP is one of the many companies that started from shedlike premises. You can still visit the HP Garage today (pictured here in 1939 when Hewlett-Packard was founded) as it is California Historic Landmark No. 976 — Birthplace of Silicon Valley. HP have preserved it at 367 Addison Avenue, Palo Alto, and although it's not open to the public, you can see it from the pavement/sidewalk. There's a huge amount of detail and numerous articles about the garage at the HP site here. Thanks to Cathy Dobson for alerting me to this.

Closer to home (well, my home), is Herbert Frood's shed at Combs in the Peak District. In his garden shed he designed 'brake shoes' for horse-drawn cart wheels from hair and bitumen. He called them Ferodo and made a fortune thanks to commissions from, among others, the London General Omnibus Company and the army who fitted them to their tanks.
The hut is still preserved, on the works bowling green of the factory he moved out to when the shed got too small. More information from Peakland Heritage here.

Godolphin eco shed

The Godolphin Road Community Garden and its sister community garden Loris Gardens are former second world war bomb sites now managed by the Hammersmith Community Gardens Association. Six years ago, the HCGA built an ecoshed garden office designed by Studio E Architects at the Loris site with a kitchen/office, toilet and storage, sedum roof, recycled fixtures including sinks and windows plus newspaper insulation.

Over the last year, they have constructed a second eco shed (pictured above) at the Godolphin garden, designed by Jason Wren from sustainable practice Shape Architecture. It also has newspaper insulation and a rubble roof to attract wildlife and was constructed off-site before being craned in. Cathy Maund of the HCGA said: "The eco-shed is basically a meeting space in the Godolphin Road Community Garden. It is fully equipped with power, kitchen units and toilets and is completely environmentally friendly. It is a small green building, designed by architects and made of sustainable wood. The garden was looking a bit tired so we have installed some new fencing, refurbished the garden mural and put in new planters."

The HCGA is a commendable organisation: it runs sessions in garden maintenance, food growing and composting, wildlife gardening and medicinal herbs for volunteers as well as leading after-school gardening clubs, family play schemes and giving environmental advice to other local groups.
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Shed of Reality

Cathy Johnson (no relation) writes the excellent Shed of Reality blog which she says "exists to encourage all those who have ever wanted--and needed!--a tiny getaway close to home. A workshop, playhouse, garden shed, sanctuary, mini-greenhouse, studio, home office". Lots of nice ideas about fitting out your shedlike atmosphere plus technical and official information as well as lovely sketches and artwork to admire. Well worth a browse and you might also be interested in hunting down a secondhand copy of her book A Naturalist's Cabin.

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A look inside the shed of reality (video)

We featured Cathy Johnson's Shed of Reality recently and now here is a rather nice video of what it's like inside the garden office.
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Grow your own garden office

As long as you’re not in a rush, how about growing your own garden office? Pictured is an example of how it could be done, a design by architects Mitchell Joachim, Lara Greden, and Javier Arbona-Homar which they call the Fab Tree Hab. By weaving together young trees (‘pleaching’), it would be possible to build a shedworkable lattice structure over several years. As the trees mature, vines are grown onto the walls and gaps filled with earth or other plants. Inside, the walls would be insulated with straw and clay. For more information click here.

Richard Reames is one of the pioneers of building using trees and grows chairs, tables and other ‘arborsculptures’ at his Oregon nursery/studio and for clients. “Living trees could be grown in such a way as to provide a weather tight structure,” he says. “By planning and encouraging the trees to grow together a solid structure can be grown. The trees could also provide fruit or firewood on an annual basis. These living houses would be almost indestructible and last for much longer than the life of the trees themselves, which could be hundreds or even thousands of years.” More information at his site here where you can also buy a copy of Richard’s excellent book on the subject.

Here's an example of how these living sheds can look, the ficus benjamina house on Okinawa Island. You might also be interested in the Treedome Project.These clever folk have designed latticeworks of tree branches and grown them into cylindrical, multi-room dwellings which become fully-enclosed botanical domes. Fruit and other foods grow on the roof and walls.

All these projects have been covered at the marvellous inhabitat here and here. Thanks to our German correspondent Cathy Dobson for alerting me to this.

Loneliness or solitude?

When homeworking is mentioned in the media, one of the major drawbacks always highlighted is the possible feeling of isolation. I've never found this to be a problem and it's good to see that I'm not alone. Artist Cathy Lomax writing in The Guardian says that:
"One of the main things I love about being in my studio is the solitude. When I shut the door, it is just me and all the various things that I have here, and I can do what I like...I really enjoy being by myself - although I do like having a bit of background noise, such as the radio."