Mark Mills Papers

Roderick Grant · Post by **Roderick Grant** » Sun Aug 25, 2019 3:20 pm

It still works for me. The enlarged image has the small image in the upper right corner. Without clicking on the image to begin with, just use touch-screen to enlarge it.

SDR · Post by **SDR** » Sun Aug 25, 2019 4:18 pm

Interesting. I don't have a touch screen, but I'll try again. Thanks.

It's back. The thumbnail image upper right fades after a moment. That's how I was able to take my screen shots.

S

dkottum · Post by **dkottum** » Tue Aug 27, 2019 1:57 pm

I just received a book from Amazon, copyright 2017, "The Fantastic Seashell of the Mind", The Architecture of Mark Mills by Janey Bennett.

Lots of excellent color and b & w images, light on text, that looks at his life and work in the Monterey area.

The involvement of Mills in the design and building of Nat and Margaret Owings' Wild Bird is described (it was a longtime family friendship of Margaret with the Mills family that brought Mark into the project), as well as the spec houses for Della Walker (Mark helped build her FLW house, recruited as a carpenter to interpret the design).

Nice book, I am enjoying it.

Doug

Tom · Post by **Tom** » Wed Aug 28, 2019 9:51 am

dkottum wrote: The involvement of Mills in the design and building of Nat and Margaret Owings' Wild Bird is described (it was a longtime family friendship of Margaret with the Mills family that brought Mark into the project)
Doug

Always suspected something like this. In a sense it's her house. Nat let her do her thing there I bet. Good for him.

Tom · Post by **Tom** » Wed Aug 28, 2019 4:03 pm

Got the selcted poetry of Robinson Jeffers frm the library today.

Tom · Post by **Tom** » Tue Sep 03, 2019 8:55 am

Carmel Point
The extraordinary patience of things!
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses -
How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rock-heads -
Now the spoiler has come: does it care?
Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty
Lives in the very grain of the granite,
Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff. - As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean we were made from.
(1948-1953)
The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers

SDR · Post by **SDR** » Tue Sep 03, 2019 12:35 pm

Here is the complete interview with Mark Mills, published in Pierluigi Serraino's "NorCalMod."

Roderick Grant · Post by **Roderick Grant** » Tue Sep 03, 2019 1:10 pm

"But, anyway, we ere down in that little gully. So I did that A-frame house ... I did all the masonry work, put the rocks in ... Then the house next door, another poet and I and a digger, we built that house...."

The "house next door" is visible on Google. Looks very interesting. Is it one of the houses that got published?

Tom · Post by **Tom** » Tue Sep 03, 2019 1:36 pm

... and interesting what he says about the Owings house. Sounds like he never would have put an AFrame there:

Grimes Point
36.205165,-121.736687

Roderick Grant · Post by **Roderick Grant** » Tue Sep 03, 2019 2:17 pm

In 1964, I photographed the Owings House from a good distance to the north, from which vantage and distance it appeared like a tiny, shiny triangle on the edge of a steep cliff. Mills was right, it didn't belong there, but it was a magical house, nevertheless.

SDR · Post by **SDR** » Tue Sep 03, 2019 2:42 pm

It's still there, having undergone a remodel; we saw the pics last year, I think---when it was published for sale ?

It's hell trying to follow Mills in his history of the three first houses, all of which I think we've looked at in this thread.

S