the studio and gallery :: the construction
I designed the studio & gallery as a modern building able to serve as a work and a showplace, as well as a potential living space, while at the same time fitting with the colonial architecture of Boalsburg Village. I wanted the building to look as though it was built before my home, which is located on the same property and was built around 1920.Attempting to find an old original structure to dismantle and then reassemble on my site proved to be a daunting task. I soon realized that in order to do this, I would pretty much have to commit to the original layout and size of the building. Finding one that was worthy of rebuilding was not easy. So, after six months and many disappointments, I was given a gift that requires a short story…
One Saturday morning in March I was on my way to close the deal on some very nice logs that I had found through one of my newspaper ads. The man selling them had dismantled a two story log building in southern PA and had moved them to his home in Huntingdon County, which is about 30 miles from Boalsburg. As I said, the logs were nice but not quite what I wanted. I figured that they were as good as I was going to find, so I said that I would take them. I was running a bit early for our appointment andwas on my way there with a check in hand., but I decided to take a short cut to the man's home. Well, as it goes, I got kind lost and was going to be late if I didn't turn around. Hoping to find a cross road ahead to take before having to turn around, I kept going. Nothing. I stopped my truck, looked at my trip meter and said to myself, "One more mile. If I don't come to a cross road, I'm turning around."
At ¾ of a mile, I looked down into a meadow on my left and there, stacked up nearly eight feet tall, were the most beautiful hewn logs that I had ever seen. I slammed on the brakes and just stared. There was nothing else around - no house, no barn, no people. Just this huge stack of logs with a lane winding around them and up into the woods beyond. I quickly drove my truck down to take a closer look. There before me were 33 logs, all 8" thick from flat side to flat side, and some as wide as 18" and all over 28 feet long. Quite a few were in the 30 - 40 foot range, and some were over 40 feet long. The first thing that I noticed though was that they were not hand hewn but rather, had been cut flat on two sides at a sawmill (a minor disappointment). This meant that they were not from an old structure, and were fairly new. Who did they belong to and what were they doing there?