A STUDIO TOUR

By Jim Hickson

Do you have a favorite spot in your abode?   A place to sit and ruminate and occasionally write?  I do.  It is my tiny studio that looks north over a steep hill 150 feet above Colfax, tucked into 5.5 x 7 foot corner of our large upstairs bedroom.
The studio has a door, a big window and after 38 years a myriad of collectibles, books, photographs, paintings and miscellaneous stuff collected by me or gifted to me.  It is a solace, an inspiration, an oasis and I am very lucky.  It is the only space in my world that I have almost complete control over.

I am going to take you on a tour of this space.

To the north is the big window and beneath it the small desk that used to belong to Jana Brown, Rick and Jackie’s daughter.  There is a pastel painting of a cheetah done by my son in the upper left corner and which won some kind of state award when he was about 9.  We were dumbfounded.

Underneath is a Tom Killion print of Mount Tam (I have many Tom Killion prints and have visited him in his Point Reyes studio twice).  A wooden radio that gives me KVMR clearly.  A indoor/outdoor thermometer hangs from the window frame.  But most importantly rest many of my Zuni fetishes which I have carefully collected for over 12 years.  Atop the radio and arranged in each direction of the compass are the major Zuni fetishes.  Mountain Lion in the north, bear in the west, badger in the south and wolf in the east.  And at the bottom the small mole crawling out of the underworld.  Many other fetishes line the windowsill including a beautiful big-horn ram, a frog, and a roadrunner. They are hidden among strange rocks and little pieces of driftwood collected over the years.  Zuni fetishes which are carved out of various stone are very collectible and some would say powerful.  

To my right is a small, old, open sided oak end table that contains various notebooks and in the space beneath it two large containers of maps.  One of just California—cities, counties, parks, trails, watersheds, etc.  The second contains maps of the western United States and of Western Europe.  There must be 70 in total.  I’ve loved maps for many years and once worked in the University of Oregon map library as an intern.  Sierra topo maps live in another corner of our bedroom.

Turning to the eastern wall is a bulletin board with many family and friends photos, a cloud chart, a painting I did at 60, but most importantly a reproduction on handmade paper of what Alan Watts wrote on a napkin in Berkeley about 50 years ago.  My friend, Harry, retrieved it when he was a waiter in that restaurant. Harry who became a renowned letterpress printer and paper maker had the napkin reproduced on handmade paper and gifted it to me. The framed print, in Chinese characters, translates as: “You discover who you are by acting naturally.”

Alan Watts was a British autodidact who moved to the Bay Area and became a savant of eastern religions and Buddhism.  For over a decade he had a weekly radio program from KPFA in Berkeley, and a TV series on KQED.  He was a renowned scholar and lecturer who was also a bit of a bon vivant.  His talks and thoughts are still popular on Youtube 50 and radio shows 50 years after his death.  He had several famous books (among the 25 he authored), among them “Psychotherapy East and West,” “The Way of Zen”  and “Nature, Man and Woman.”

High above the door resides a Daniel Randolph drawing of the Santa Barbara Harbor done in the mid 70’s.  He lived in an artists studio in our backyard on Olive Street when we were first married and became a dedicated and successful artist.

The studio door is mostly open to bring in more light and views from this (it almost seems) treehouse.  In the doorway of my studio our children gathered at different times when they were very little and would sit on the floor and draw while I wrote occasionally—but mostly sat and stared at Big Hill or just to the northeast Old Man Mountain.  Glancing down often to see the swirls and colors from their precious art.
Realizing as the rain fell outside that time too falls away in swirling eddies downstream.  Memories are the echoes remaining.

On the south wall (the longest) is a 4 by 4 foot USGS map of Northern California with topographic details at the scale of 1-500,000 or 1 inch to 8 miles.  There is also a long narrow bookcase that contains a small reference set: thesaurus, quotations, dictionaries, idioms, and my grandpa’s ‘word finder.’ Thirty of my favorite books line the top shelf while the second shelf holds mostly art supplies.

Above that lies a hanging shelf with my favorite first editions, many signed by the author.  They include “The Snow Leopard” by Matthiessen (non-fiction);  “Crossing to Safety” by Stegner (fiction) and Kooser’s “Kindest Regards” (poetry).  There are 20 other important books of personal and other value, including  authors like Doig, McMurtry, Kunitz, Haruf and Abbey.  Along the sides are shallow shelves with two autographed baseballs, one of which is a 2010 Giants World Series ball autographed by Tim Lincecum (Cy Young winner) and Buster Posey (Rookie of the Year).  The other is a a 2014 World Series ball signed by Madison Bumgarner.

On the west wall is more art including Jim Lee’s famous print of a Japanese impression of a surfer on a wave inspired by Kanagawa; print of a poem by Gary Synder and illustrated by Tom Killion, and a large poster by Yamagata called  “The Poet II).”   Along another flat shelf is a collection of green sea glass, more
fetishes and more publications in which my poetry has appeared.  On the far left are the 6 chapbooks Rick and I co-published (Lingerlong Press, Meadow Vista). There is another end table with stacked writings and below that a closed drawer that contains among other things a series of letters sent to me from friends in Berkeley in the early 1970’s.  I haven’t looked at them in 20 years.  

It’s time to swivel again toward the north and watch the raindrops blanket the golden black oaks as the pines thrust through the mist.  I have spent many days, months, and seasons staring into the north sky from the same seat.  Much more time lost in thought rather than accomplishing something specific in literature or art.
Those days are fading.  I like to think of myself as having a rich interior life.  Perhaps my “self reflection” is  just laziness.  Perhaps both.  A sunbeam lights the hills and a rainbow appears over Giant Gap.  A baroque symphony filters like smoke through the centuries from my old radio.  

Here’s a poem I wrote 12 years ago while gazing out the window.

                        FORECAST

      The full moon rides over ghostly hills,
      The high clouds, glazed with ice, incandescent.
      North of west the sun of April falls
      Like the Hindenburg into a sea of flowers.
      Black oak leaves rattle,
      Yellow pine needles hiss
      As the breeze backs to the south and east.
      Ribbons of moonlight glide in waves
      Then circle back to form a halo.
      Far away Snow Mountain shines dimly white.

Today I stare at a white canvas and a blank sheet of paper.  The rain starts up again.
Another year rolls along.  In my studio observatory I ponder our voyage.