Tariki Studio News

Private Residence in Massachusetts.

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Cornish, NH

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Cisco Brothers furniture showroom in High Point, North Carolina.

The building sets on a street corner at the top of a low bluff in the city of Highpoint NC. It flows down towards a small creek and wet lands that frame the western edge of the property. The100 year old brick steel and timber constructed facility is a vision of a utopian era that has passed only to be greeted by successive generations of dreamers and schemers who felt that they could bend its will to their needs and demands. The cotton mill at its heyday was really a center of community providing housing the church schooling employment the perfect setting for raising a family and building for the future. The story resonates with Highpoint and its current history as the city struggles to find its way in a global economy. We hope with this project to celebrate and learn from this rich past and yet offer our own current thoughts about how the utopian vision might be reshaped to point a way forward for Highpoint’s rich history with the furniture industry.

This question of design lies in thinking and listening to the land and building itself. I would venture that we need to see them as one organic whole. A natural living system with its cycles, needs, demands and gifts that if we nurture all these areas as a living breathing entity we will proceed along a path that will deliver us to a place we recognize and love at the end of the process but the road may seem unrecognizable. The following notes are my encounters with the mills and the very special piece of land that it sets on that creates this larger system that I find myself embedded in. I preface these comments with a fact that came to me while watching a documentary about Grand Central Station in NYC. The mill is a 23-acre piece of property exactly the same amount of land that grand central station sets on in NYC. I think that it is no exaggeration to say that Highpoint Is the Grand Central Station of the furniture industry in the world and that in the same way grand central was rescued which was by turning to greener healthier environmentally sound future with clean electric trains. The city of highpoint is at a Crossroads to embrace this process of renewal and design with great care given to the land that supports us all. The respect for the earth that provides everything we need to do any of the creative processes that we are all involved in and the grace to listen to those natural wonders that surround us and that we trample at our own peril.

My First visit was last Oct during the Fall Highpoint show. I came down to discuss some ideas with Cisco about what he does and what I do and to see if perhaps we could work on a project of some sort together. We had met through my daughter Anna who has helped me with my work with Mexican ceramists who are struggling to leave lead behind in their glazing and move to new healthy glazing process. A wonderful group called Barro Sin Plomo is working across Mexico with this training. Cisco and his wife had been great supporters of this work and a dialogue had begun between Cisco and myself about Mexico it peoples it cultures the whole mix. I have been in love with Mexico for over 35 years since my wife first brought me there. So last October Cisco took me down to the Mills for a very short visit to the Mills. He said he intended to make this his new home and asked me if I wanted to head the project to transform this property into home for Cisco Brothers and others who are embracing this revolution in green thought and design.

My own work has over the last 15 years deepened into larger projects that have embraced these ideals in many different ways. I knew that this project was exactly what I wanted to do at that moment and accepted the position on the spot. It was a late fall afternoon. Warm the sun shining and it had that angular fall light warming the face of the building and framing the forest on northwest corner of the property with a luminous glow. This is one of those moments that you know hides many mysteries but give you the impetus to charge forward. I left highpoint that evening and flew back to NH with little real sense of the building itself.

Greetings from the studio in Meridan N.H. We all survived the winter and now that the snow is gone, the fields are dry and the ice is off the walls in the quarry, nascent is in the air. Early in April, Eric, Bob and Kevin installed a tachi-gata lantern at Cheshire, CT.

On April 9, New York photographer Morton “Skip” Hamburg was in town to photograph Eric for his upcoming book, “Great Artists in Their Studios”. Another area artist, Varujan Boghosian was also photographed in his studio at Dartmouth. BOL for this book the list of artists to be included is remarkable.

Team Tariki will be heading back to Long Island very shortly to continue the garden project. Eric made a couple of trips during the winter to visit the site.

Our building project in the Boston area has received final approval and will commence shortly. Next posting we should have photographs of this unique addition. Thanks to these clients, Neil Leifer and Ellen Carno, for hosting a successful fund raiser-show for Barros Sin Plomo. This was the second such event sponsored by friends of Tariki. Thanks also goes to clients in Vermont for their hosting a similar event earlier in the year. Earlier this year Ellen and Neil and their two boys traveled with Eric to Mexico for a little front line duty. What follows are Neil’s thoughts on this experience.

COMING BACK TO INDIAN COUNTRY
Six years ago, my mother telephoned from her home in Florida to tell me that my father had inoperable lung cancer and had less than a year to live. I had just finished representing the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in a difficult lawsuit against the tobacco industry, and in that effort I had learned a great deal about lung cancer. I had also developed a close working relationship with the chief of thoracic surgery at one of Boston’s pre-eminent hospitals. After speaking with my father’s oncologist who offered little hope and no options, I sent an email to the Boston surgeon. He offered to review the x-rays and upon doing so told me that the cancer was far from inoperable. My father came to Boston a few weeks later, had the surgery and is alive today. During his hospitalization in Boston, I suddenly felt that all of the hours, the years, that I worked on the tobacco case were perhaps in preparation for a single moment, the moment when I would be called upon to help my father. It was a spiritual moment.
In hindsight, I realize that I first felt the drum when I was 20 years old. I was driving with friends from Colorado to the Grand Tetons and we were standing just off the road in southern Wyoming. While looking north into the high prairie, something about the land looked very familiar, and I remember thinking that I felt the beat of a drum, but then thought that it was just my heart. In the next 10 years, I passed that spot in Wyoming two more times, and each time I stopped and found myself looking north into the high prairie. I did not see anything in particular; it just felt very familiar. During this time, I began doing legal work for Indian tribes and tribal members among the Apache in the southwest and then with the eastern tribes of New England. In 1983, I left the practice of Indian law and began the journey to use law to promote public health. I left the tribes with sadness and regret, feeling that my contribution was incomplete. I also deeply missed the spirituality of Indian country. I did not feel the drum again for more than 20 years, but it was still beating.
In 2004, for my 50th birthday, my wife commissioned an artist to make a totem pole to be placed behind our home. I was skeptical, perhaps more accurately, I was wary of spending a lot of money on art work, but agreed to meet with the artist. Eric O’Leary is a bear of man. He is well north of 6 feet and well north of 200 pounds, but more than that I cannot say. In fact, I am never quite sure just how big he is. But he is big. We met in my kitchen early 2005. Eric wanted to know about our lives and experiences to incorporate into the sculpture that he would create. Moving beyond my current passion for all things cycling related, I shared my past experiences working for and among American Indians and my more current legal work around childhood lead poisoning. He laughed in amazement, offering that he too had spent years among Indians, in Mexico, and was working on some project concerning lead in pottery. In truth, I attributed his effort to connect to my experiences as part of the sales pitch to build a bigger totem pole and quickly forgot about both his Indians in Mexico and their pottery.
The totem pole arrived in the fall of 2005 and it was magnificent. I immediately recognized the big ring and crank representing the bicycle, but beyond that nothing else was familiar. I asked him what it represented, what inspired him to make the design, and he mentioned something about Indian land somewhere in Mexico. The totem pole was massive, muted in color, and quietly stood behind the house. I would look at in the morning light and again at night. It did not talk to me, but I did feel that it was looking at me. One night during high winds I worried about it and found myself checking on it throughout the night. It was fine.
Perhaps the totem pole spoke to me, but if it did I did not understand it. My wife understood it, however. It told her to buy a lot of art, and she did. As a result, I would see Eric from time to time building this or that piece of artwork and he would occasionally tell me that he would have to get me down to Mexico. I paid little attention to the idea.
Around this time, my law partner, Michael Thornton, took a trip to Peru where he visited a town high in the Andes with the biggest lead smelter in the world. The Indians of La Oroyo, those who work at the smelter, those who live in the town, and their children, are all lead poisoned. When he described the experience, I was immediately drawn to the issue. I looked at the pictures of the children from La Oroyo and they were the same faces that I had seen on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation where I had lived so many years ago. We discussed legal options and remedies for La Oroyo, but ran up against the problem seen in so many instances where the polluter is the economic lifeline for the town and when choosing between slowly poisoning your population and starving, we always seem to opt for slow poisoning. The paradox reminded me of the story about a visit by Charles Dickens to a lead factory near London in the 19th Century that I learned from by Herbert L. Needleman, M.D., a friend and colleague, and the leading authority on childhood lead poisoning in the United States. Had Dickens visited La Oroyo with Mike Thornton, he would have seen the same dilemma that workers faced in London 150 years earlier. La Oroya is where I started to feel my drum beat again.
In the fall of 2006, I finally agreed with Eric O’Leary to go to Mexico. We set up a visit for early January 2007. As the date approached, I had done nothing to learn about where we were going, who we would be seeing or what we would be doing. Indeed, I had not even bothered to investigate anything about the conditions in Mexico. In hindsight, I was in denial, probably because I was afraid. I had lived for so many years near Boston, that metaphorically and literally my feet had lost their calluses. I had become too used to living in the safe, predictable matrix of a Boston suburb. I unconsciously did not want to think about or have to navigate unfamiliar lands, with unfamiliar peoples.
Our flight to Mexico on January 9, 2007 was predawn. In the heart of winter, the sun rose after we departed. It was dream-like. I plunged into the night, with my wife and my two sons. I was uncertain where we were going, whether I or my family would be safe, unclear as to why I was on this journey and secretly hoping that it would pass by quickly without effect. After all, just two weeks before our trip, someone had rolled 5 severed heads onto a dance floor in Michoacán, the state where our journey would be centered. I was sure that the pounding in my chest was my heart and not the beat of a calling drum. But I was wrong.
What Eric O’Leary had been trying to tell me and what I had failed to appreciate was that large numbers of Indian ceramic artisans in Mexico had been trapped in a cycle of poverty and lead poisoning. While some of the world’s most beautiful pottery is made in Mexico, most of it is toxic and cannot be sold in the United States. It is toxic because it is glazed with lead, a practice introduced by the Spanish centuries ago. The ceramics are made and fired in wood burning kilns right in small adobe homes in villages the mountains of Michoacán and other states in Mexico. The consequences for the artisans and their families, especially small children and women of child-bearing age who are exposed to this lead are truly horrific. Lead is a neurotoxin, meaning that it is a poison to the brain. It is particularly toxic to developing brains of children. Blood lead levels of the children of ceramic workers is staggering.
The world has known of the neurotoxicity of lead for more than 100 years, but like the Dickensian lead workers in London in the 1850s and the Indians of La Oroyo, Peru, the Indian ceramic workers of Mexico have for years tried to eke out a living selling their pottery, all the while poisoning themselves and their families. For years, the United States was the principal market for much of that pottery. However, that ended in 1978 when the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) banned consumer products with more than .06% lead. That was great news of American children whose blood lead levels have dramatically declined over the last 25 years, which also corresponds with the phase out of lead in gasoline and the banning of lead-based paint, but there is a principle known as “the law of unintended consequences” and it was operating here. The 1978 CPSC ban was ruinous to the ceramic industry in Mexico.
At the time of the CPSC ban, it is estimated that there were more than a million Indians artisans making ceramic glazed pottery. Since the ban went into effect, it is estimated that as many as 90% of these artisans have been forced to abandon their craft, and many of them have had to leave their homes and enter the United States, often without documents, to earn money to support their families. There are villages in the mountains of Michoacán where there are no men of working age, only children, women and old men. The rest are in the United States. However, for the hundreds of thousands of artisans who kept on trying to make a living making lead-glazed ceramics, they continued to poison themselves and their children. That was until the big man, Eric O’Leary, discovered the dilemma.
Unlike Dickens who in the 19th Century could see no solution to the age old paradox of health being sacrificed by economic necessity, Eric O’Leary, himself a ceramic artist applied the first rule of industrial hygiene: cap pollution at the point source, in this case, the kiln. He visited numerous villages, learned and respected the cultural traditions and then offered a solution – a lead-free substitute glaze that produced comparably beautiful pottery and a more efficient down draft kiln. Thus was born the organization called Barros Sin Plomo (“clay without lead”), and applying the exponential principle of training one artisan, who would train two, and each of those would train two and so on, the conversion from leaded glaze to lead-free glaze had begun.
After a few days and many meetings in Mexico City and elsewhere, the genius of Barros Sin Plomo became clearer to me. The unintended consequence of the CPSC ban had actually created an opportunity to introduce a lead-safe practice which would prevent lead poisoning, but also reopen the lucrative markets in the United States. Here was the opportunity to marry public health, economic development and the preservation of a culture. We left Mexico City and climbed into the mountains of the state of Michoacán. At that point, I began to see that our journey was to take us to the villages of Perepecha (per-AY-PA-cha) Indians to see first hand how the pottery is made and how the transition to lead-free glazes had affected the lives of these peoples. We arrived in the first village, Santa Fe de la Laguna, at dusk. We were a caravan of four cars and 14 people. We walked down narrow streets, more like alleys and eventually came to the door of one of the first artisans to make the transition. When we entered, it was hard to tell whether we were going from the outside to the indoors or the other way around. His home was partially open to dense underbrush behind the house. To the left sat an ancient Indian woman whose granddaughters were braiding her hair. To the right, was an opened patio-like area, which housed the kitchen and a great deal of finished and unfinished pottery. We gathered on the patio with and listened as the artisan and his wife told their story. She told of her inability to carry a child to term because her blood lead levels were so high, but that after they made the conversion to the lead-free glaze she had borne two beautiful daughters. There testimony was riveting. As I used to hear in Indian Country, this was powerful medicine.
It was a powerful moment. In this house, in this village, I realized that after many years I had finally stopped focusing on the pounding of my heart and started once again to feel the pounding of a drum. I felt as if I had awoken from a long dream. I recognized that I had been coaxed, pushed and perhaps even dragged back into the real world. I felt like I was home. A few days later, I gratefully wrote the following:
Mexico (January 16, 2007)
Who would want to be awoken from a good dream, even if it were only a dream? Who would want to be awoken from a long dream, a safe dream, even if it were only a dream? Who would not feel the brightness of natural light after the eyes have been shut for a long time? Colors, shapes and images in dreams are softer and less sharp than the brightness of light upon awakening. It had been such a long time since I was awake that I had forgotten how to see.

Who would not resist? Who would not resist returning to the natural world from the dream world, where feet have lost the calluses of walking on the uneven ground of the awoken world? Who would not resist? Deep in sleep, who would choose to be awoken from a good dream, a long dream, with soft feet and eyes that have forgotten natural light? It had been such a long time since I walked on uneven ground that I had forgotten how to balance.

Who would not resist and who would not fight the guide from the unknown, the dreamwaker, who pulls the dreamer and his sons from the good, long dream world into the brightness of the awoken world? When would that brightness not feel harsh, that awoken world not seem dangerous, difficult, powerful, sharp, uneven? I had lived so long in a dream world where life is measured more by length than by depth that I had forgotten how to know the richness of the moment.

But the eyes adjust, the calluses return, the sweet air sharpens, the black eyes penetrate, the uneven stones fit together, outside is inside, inside is outside. The awakened does not leave in the same way that the dreamer enters, although it is through the same door.

How did I get from the dream to the waking state? How did I remember that the richness of life is measured not so much by length as it is by depth? Ending up in Mexico was not a coincidence. As I reflected on what I saw, learned and have now committed to do in Mexico, I wondered whether I had left Indian country long ago to acquire some knowledge or experience that would be of great value to those peoples when I later returned. And now I had returned, 23 years later, with some knowledge of lead and colleagues in the medical and scientific community who could help to solve the lead poisoning problem among ceramic artisans in Mexico. It reminded me of the feeling I had when I realized that my work in tobacco litigation had perhaps been necessary to prepare me for the moment when I could help my father. It is powerful medicine. Neil Leifer Spring 2007

Sounds like Neil had a good time.Thanks for the kind words, welcome aboard and we’re looking forward exploring this ‘powerful medicine” together. Here are a couple of shots of street murals we ran across during the trip.

Greeting to our Tariki friends. The team has been at work at the shop with numerous firings and our annual Fall “dented can” sale. Eric designed and produced a remarkable piece that is now in place in the Boston area. This ceramic mountain, stainless steel tree and roosting ceramic bird sculpture adorn the garden of long time friends/clients.

We received an image of one of Eric’s totems that is installed at The Park at Spanish Ridge in Las Vegas, NV. The piece was placed by Angela M. Cerrata, designer for Glen, Smith and Glen Development.

We would like to thank Jason for efforts over the last few months, he’s headed to Costa Rica to help with the family business.

Tariki life continues in the mixing chamber of Eric’s vision. Several bisque and glaze firings have produced numerous “stunners” that have spread out across the country. Chans, hourglass tables, night tables, benches, lanterns and platers have found homes.

Eric and team Tariki have also been on the road. We touched up our Norwich , Vt. project with a few plantings. Onset of fall eased this project’s evolution.

Eric also travelled to Washington to install one of his wonderful Pagoda fountains.

On his return trip to New Hampshire, he stopped at Pinnacle Health Care Hospital in Harrisburg, PA, to visit a water sculpture he installed a decade ago. Although recently drained for the season, this piece is doing just fine. The intertwining ivy adds just the right touch.

Last week team Tariki headed to our large Long Island project for one final season ending installation. The week started at the Vermont Verde Antique quarry where the crew and five trucks were greeted with snow on the mountain. Trucks loaded with serpentine and lycopodium sheet moss headed to Bridge Hampton. Five days of bad weather and long hours left the team exhausted, but exhilarated. Watch for photos when a light snow touches this incredible garden.

Last Thursday Eric traveled to the New Britain Museum of American Art as a part of the 2006 American Arts and Crafts Show. Eric, along with artists Karolina Kawiaka, Mitch Ryerson, Tom Simpson, Ed Goldberg, Paula Wanrooij and Judy McKie were commissioned to create benches designed for the Chase Family Building. This artist’s reception officially accepted the pieces in to the museum’s collection.

On Monday Eric and Tom traveled to Fairfield County, Ct. and installed a wind sculpture for a long time client. The setting is high on a ridge top, the view and setting are fabulous. Also at this site we visited one of Eric’s totems that has been in place for over a decade.

A change in the Vermont weather permitted team Tariki to complete the Norwich, Vt. project. As one moves from the owner’s house garden, down a path, Eric’s wooden bridge comes into sight. The bridge, for crossing, reflection, display and gathering, spans a brook and is adorned with Tariki lanterns and ceramic waterfowl. The bridge terminates at another pathway, which leads to Eric’s floating gate/bench sculpture and granite placement. The owners intend to leave this hillside quite natural, with the exception for a few plantings.

Back at the studio work continued with a kiln firing and final touches on several commission pieces. Eric and Tom will be traveling to Ct. and D.C, this week for installation of a ceramic wind sculpture and a beautiful ceramic fountain.

The opening reception at the Cairn Croft Sculpture Garden show was last Friday and was well attended and received. On Saturday, the Boston Globe featured the show with an article and photographs. This event continues to be a premier venue for Boston area sculptors. We love to view these works outdoors, where changes in light, weather and scale enhance the experience. And again, thanks to Kevin Doyle, Michael Radoslovich and Meredyth Hyatt Moses for their collaboration.

Check our Flickr site for photos.

The action at Tariki these past couple of months has been fast paced, varied and quite rewarding. Ongoing large projects on Long Island, in Vermont and near Boston have the team away from the studio, as weather permits. Back in Meridan, Eric and the team are creating a large totem piece for the Cairn Croft sculptural event in Dover, Ma. This event is collaboration of fifteen artist and gardens and landscape designers Kevin Doyle, Michael Radoslovich and curator, Meredyth Hyatt Moses.. Details and open day schedule may be viewed at www.cairncroftsculpture.com.

Eric’s efforts on the global scale have continued throughout the summer, with a very successful trip to New Mexico in support Aid to Artisans. The road between artisans and healthy markets continues to get shorter. The accomplishments of the this organization are truly astounding and should serve as a model for governments, NGOs, consumers and artisans globally. He remains active with the Sierra Madre Alliance, technical advisor for the lead free alliance, Barro Sin Plomo, and Eric’s home grown organization, Kiln-fired Communications. KFC team members will be heading to Pino Gordo, Mexico this fall to start documentary filming.

In the coming months, we will be assembling and installing a sculptural gate and bridge in Vermont. The following pictures show the various elements that will eventually come together. The bridge and the gate have both been dynamically fabricated from steel and wood and will be fitted with ceramic sculptural pieces.

The site for the gate and bridge structures.

A dry run of the gate structure at the Studio.

This picture shows the bridge which will eventually span a stream and incorporate oak railings and ceramic lights.

We are drawing closer to installation. Now that the monsoon season has ended here in New Hampshire, we need the ground to dry sufficiently.

Though we often stray from the clay, Bob and Kevin can still be found doing slab work: