Building a House on Bedrock or Life as Art by Radley Williams 11/97

_{Building
a H}_{ouse on Bedrock or Life
as Art}

_{by
Radley Williams}

_{Nancy Copley
and her husband Paul run the Hyssop Viandes Bakery in a cube shaped building
at the end of Lucas Avenue Turnpike in Accord. They make sourdough breads that
are so touched and kneaded and attended to that you can taste the creativity
in each chewy bite. I had tried to sell her advertising but had been flatly
denied. Usually I take rejection as a challenge to persist. But the sound in
her voice was strong, which was compelling in a different way. I was curious
about the substance, the being-ferment from which it arose.}

_{"We make
bread using the traditional methods," she said. "We don't need to
advertise. Our breads have integrity."}

_{This word, integrity,
seems emptied of meaning by Madison Avenue marketing. But its implications are
interesting, suggesting completeness, wholeness, and at the same time virtue
and honor.}

_{"The marketplace
is not a place for creativity," Copley suggested. "It is a place for
cutthroats."}

_{Intrigued by
her approach I asked Copley if we could meet and was invited to her home. After
a lengthy drive along several narrow roads in the backwoods of Accord, Amara
and I arrived at Copley's residence, which has been an all-consuming project
of some twenty five years.}

_{From the driveway
we traversed a raised walkway, like a sluice funneling visitors into the house.
Copley is an architect by training and her house looks more like a sculpture
or a monument than an abode. She coined the term "Diamond Design"
to describe the structure of the house. Its top-like shape rises organically
from the forest floor.}

_{"Have we
arrived at Area 51?" I asked.}

_{As we walked
up, a portal opened in the side of the awesome structure. The 12' door lifted
upwards, the bottom of the solid oak piece tilting out until the door was horizontal.
Copley was framed in the huge doorway, turning the crank that opened the door,
and looking very small. The effect was complete as I looked into the house and
saw clear to the other side. This was the inner facet of a crystal, the edge
of a diamond.}

_{"There
is nothing you can calculate in the structure of this house," Copley explained.
"It's all intuitive."}

_{We are given
the tour. The house is built around a forty three foot tower, which 65 year-old
Copley built by hand, stone upon stone. The tower rises dramatically, sloping
with a graceful strength upwards on each side. It is prominent both within and
outside the building. For Copley, each part is as important as the whole.}

_{"I am very
sensitive to the natural shapes of the stones," she said. "The quarry
owner lets me pick through the piles of rubble to find just the stones I want."}

_{Inside, the
house feels like a cathedral. Giant beams stretch from the girdling edge of
the diamond many feet to the ceiling, supporting the roof, springing upward
at a 60o angle. Windows and lights provide a consistent balance of natural and
artificial light, and an antique pipe organ rests on a platform nestled into
the alcove halfway up the tower. The organ was rescued from a condemned church
in upstate New York. In between laying stone and baking bread, Copley practices
Bach fugues.}

_{"The roof
is the main feature," Copley explains. "All around the house are hickories,
oaks, gray beaches, hemlocks. It's like sitting in the woods under an umbrella."}

_{From the outside,
the unusual shape is surprisingly unobtrusive. It seems a natural human extension
in the realm of nature. The copper roofing blends with the colors of the forest.}

_{"The feeling
I'm trying to accomplish," she said, "is that the house is growing
out of the site."}

_{Going back through
the giant portal we travel to the side of the house where the tower gracefully
descends. Copley had been building a fountain when she slipped and fractured
her ankle. She bemoans to us the loss of time at work on the project, as she
navigates her property on crutches.}

_{The lower entrance
will traverse the fountain via a series of stepping stones rising only inches
above the water. Such creative details are sprinkled throughout the house.}

_{Copley's explanations
give the impression that, although planned intuitively, her work was not blind.
Every aspect of the plans, the land, the atmosphere, of the site and the interior
of the house, were known and actively considered before the project began. She
describes the as yet unfinished details as clearly as the work that's done.
I asked her if there has there been anything unexpected?}

_{"The light
has been the biggest surprise," she says. "Every day is different.
Most houses you can't get the feel of the light or the change of seasons. Here
you can."}

_{Copley began
the project with her former husband who died unexpectedly twenty years ago.
Since then she has devoted her life to the house. After a period of mourning,
she picked up and continued alone.}

_{All of Copley's
resources have been poured into the project. The door alone cost $5000.}

_{"I can't
go out to dinner," she laments. "All I can think of is how many bags
of cement I could buy with the money."}

_{Copley builds
her house using the same approach required to create fine sourdough breads.
And the house seems to rise, naturally, with a life of its own, in the way that
a loaf of bread does.}

_{"In the
bakery developing formulas for sourdough is very intuitive. You have to use
your senses-how it feels, tastes, looks, smells. We are constantly adjusting."}

_{How does a person
arrive at the necessary determination, passion and insight to carry out a project
of this magnitude? We see examples of people devoting themselves, almost insanely,
to a project. Usually they are striving for fame, money, or power. They become
presidents, heavyweight champions, Nobel laureates. But it is rare to find someone
whose work is hidden, who gains nothing material for the effort, who invests
all their resources in the project. Copley's results are buried in the woods
and unfinished after twenty five years of unrelenting effort. There is very
little external impetus. From whence does such determination spring?}

_{According to
Copley the key is to look beyond ordinary thinking, to paint outside the lines.}

_{"The most
important thing," she said, "is to go beyond the limits."}

_{PULL QUOTES:}

_{Copley builds
her house using the same approach required to create fine sourdough breads.
And the house seems to rise, naturally, with a life of its own, in the way that
a loaf of bread does.}

_{"I
can't go out to dinner," she laments. "All I can think of is how many
bags of cement I could buy with the money."}