Jill Nokes - Yard Art and Handmade Places: Extraordinary Expressions of Home

Yard Art and Handmade Places

EXTRAORDINARY EXPRESSIONS OF HOME

Jill Nokes, with Pat Jasper

Foreword by Betty Sue Flowers

Principal photography by Krista Whitson

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS
AUSTIN

Copyright 2007 by Jill Nokes and Krista Whitson.

All photos by Krista Whitson unless otherwise noted.

Second printing, 2008

All rights reserved

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University of Texas Press

P.O. Box 7819

Austin, TX 78713-7819

http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/rp-form

Book and jacket design by Lisa Tremaine

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nokes, Jill, 1951

Yard art and handmade places : extraordinary expressions of home / Jill Nokes, with Pat Jasper ; foreword by Betty Sue Flowers ; Krista Whitson, principal photographer. 1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-292-71679-7 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Garden ornaments and furnitureTexas. 2. Decorative artsTexas. 3. GardensTexasDesign. I. Jasper, Pat. II. Title.

SB473.5.N65 2007

712'.609764dc22

2007011574

ISBN 978-0-292-73531-6 (library e-book)
ISBN 978-0-292-78799-5 (individual e-book)

DOI 10.7560/716797

Dedicated to my dear Jack, with love and gratitude

FOREWORD

Betty Sue Flowers

YOU MIGHT EXPECT a book about yard art to be mainly descriptive in the way catalogs and travel guides are, but the journey we take in Yard Art and Handmade Places leads us into deep centers of the human heart, where to create a garden is to bestow a specific blessing. While Jill Nokes is informative about ecoregions and delightful in her descriptions (butterscotch-colored flowers), her true subject is the people she meets and the stories they tell about their yard art projects.

Only a master listener could have elicited these stories, none of them obvious from looking at the gardens themselves. There is Sam, whose yard of birdhouses, featured on TV, reunited him with a long-lost love. There is Vince, who built a Cathedral of Junka series of arched domes made of scrap metal trusses into which are woven car bumpers, kitchen utensils, bicycle parts, CDs, hubcaps, and other metallic flotsam and jetsam from our consumer culture. Like many of the other gardeners Nokes profiles, Vince has become a kind of curator of his own creation, finding that he has to post a schedule in the local weekly paper to control visitation. Nokes tells his story with dignity and respect, from his dumpster diving days to his musings about the reactions of his visitorsA lot of Depression-era people come by, and they relate to the recycling point of view, and also Ive had people cry, because theyre overwhelmed by something in it.

Like Vince and his Cathedral of Junk, almost all of the yard artists are people of very modest means who have created extraordinary expressions of themselves and their private visions of an idealized landscape. Some of these visions give their creators an intense sense of meaning in their lives and perhaps even saved the life of Cleveland, the Flower Man, whose vision in the hospital led him away from a descent into alcoholism: I had this pretty vision: it was going around like a whirlwind, picking up stuff, taking it up high and making it look pretty, and this vision was showing so many people just looking out at space, you know, just wanting to know, What is that?

So many of the stories reflect a spiritual dimension of experience that the cumulative effect is to convince us that the most primal act of individual creation must be to make a garden. One of the gardeners, Jess, celebrates the twenty-foot-high rock waterfall he built in his front yard with a corrido that suggests a closeness between the original Gardener and the human one: Las piedras que he puesto, solo Jehov Dios las hizo, hace mucho tiempo antes el paraso (The rocks that I have put here, only Jehova God made them, long ago before he made paradise).

The effect of these stories is to make us wonder and admire, and we appreciate Nokes as well as her gardeners, for she has written a book that is as much an exploration of the human spirit as it is a uniquely engaging garden tour.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ALLEN LACY SAID it all for me when he wrote, To write is to be indebted. Anyone who writes a book about people and the places they live is especially obliged to lean heavily on outside assistance. During the years of thinking and working on this project, I was always aware of my dependency on the extensive web of friends, family, and strangers who supported this effort in so many ways.

I must begin with an expression of gratitude to the people and their families who agreed to appear in this book. I was continuously amazed when, over and over, folks would welcome me, a complete stranger, into their homes and lives, and by how generous they would be in sharing their story. Today a sense of connection to others so often suffers from media-driven feelings of mistrust and fear, yet I discovered that it is still possible to recognize and enjoy our common humanity. If I convey no other message than this, I will consider this book to be successful.

This project also taught me that places are fragile. Three of the yards in this book () burned in the spring of 2006 during some of the worst wildfires ever seen in the Panhandle. So many places come and go before we even know they exist. Perhaps we meant to slow down and take a closer look, but somehow we never got around to it.

The next round of appreciation goes out to Pat Jasper, who began this book with me as co-author. I had encouraged her to sign on with me because Id hoped that her experience in folklore, combined with mine in horticulture, would yield some fresh insights on this broad subject of vernacular yards and gardens. Her companionship on long road trips and experience in fieldwork contributed so much to shaping the initial ideas and interpretations about what we were seeing. She was also a whole lot of fun! Pat is much in demand as a curator, producer, and consultant, and eventually those other commitments pulled her away from writing this book. But its safe to say had she not been willing to join me in the beginning of this wild ride, this book probably would never have gotten off the ground. So I thank you, Pat, for all the energy you put into this project, and for your friendship.

Next in line to thank are all the scouts, those folks who took me around their community, who asked around and sought out things to show me, who fed and housed me, and who, in many cases, dropped everything to accommodate my visit. There is no way I could have covered so much ground or understood even a fraction of what was on view, had it not been for their guidance. Thank all of you for good conversation and for helping me sort out my ideas. This group (and I hope against hope that I havent forgotten anyone) includes Wynn Anderson, John Begnaud, Chris Best, Lynn Castle, Bobby Crabb, Walt and Isabel Davis, Gary Dunnam, Paula Edwards, Debbie Elliott, Beth and Larry Francell, Holly Hanson, Binnie and David Hoffman, Hoppy Hopkins, Lisa Jost, Carol Kitchen, Don Lambert, Sheridan Lorenz, Robert Oliver, Linda Owen, Paula Owens, Bob and Mary Anne Pickens, Bobby Peiser, Project Row House folks (especially Antoine Bryant and Debra Grotfeldt), Morgan Price, Ruben and Marcie Reyes, Howard Taylor, Susanne Theis, Carol Wagner, Bruce and Julie Webb, Miriam Young, Cliff Vanderpool, and Wilfred Weinheimer. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge about your home towns.