Cocoon

Alison Brummer & John Martin …

… are two people that collaborated with me on the first Cocoon build in 2008. Their ideas were integral to its design and engineering.

Alison on tour

Alison Brummer is a lighting designer who lives in Los Angeles. She and I worked together in the theater for over 10 years before we collaborated on Cocoon 2008.

Cocoon model by Alison Brummer

I’ve known John Martin for close to 30 years. He worked on the design, engineering and build for 2008 and 2009 Cocoon. In 2009, John and I added 3 long silver maple saplings to the length of the structure. These became the supports for wrapping the exoskelton, 36 woven corn mats, around the Cocoon structure.

John and Rosie

Since the first Cocoon build, I’ve come to realize that circles are an engineer’s predicament.

At six feet in diameter, these are the smallest circles in the Cocoon’s structure.

One of the interesting things about making an object, especially one as large as the Cocoon, is the process of imagining the materials and then researching, finding and using them. Materials don’t always do what you want them to do particularly if you are using them in opposition to the way they grow in nature. For example, in Cragsmoor the circles were small, straight trees that we forced into a circle very much against their will.

Above are ropes we used to force the saplings into a circle form.

However, I am attuned to these types of predicaments because I come from a family of engineers: my maternal grandfather invented the carpet-weaving machine that replaced the wooden bobbin, and my father designed wire rope machines for Bethlehem Steel. This wire rope or steel cable is used in suspension bridges like the George Washington and Brooklyn Bridges.

Stacks of circles 6, 8 and 10 feet in diameter, ready for building.

I can see my father simultaneously smiling and gritting his teeth at the suggestion of something so contrary to the labyrinths of his engineering brain as using a circle for structure. A half-circle driven into the ground like a Lenape Longhouse is one thing but an entire circle left on its own to squirm its way into an oval or a flattened shape is insanity. In fact he would have enthusiastically shouted, “That’s nuts!”

And yet, my father would have acknowledged the beauty of the circle.

Listen to the story of Miniature Cocoon #8 here.

Stan is a local hand-glider in Cragsmoor, a place off Route 52 that is a Mecca for hand-gliders. The cliffs there, part of the Shawangunk Mountain Range, were left from the receding glacier ice and anyone can step off them quite easily and beautifully into nothing. Stan will tell you that that’s why he moved to the mountain or that’s why he works or lives in the frigid cold so that on any clear day he can jump off the top of the mountain into air.

Stan worked on the Cragsmoor Cocoon in 2009. He told me that back in the 1980s he built a Lenape Longhouse over at the Mohonk Preserve. The story went something like this: Mohonk paid an expert from Massachusetts to come to the preserve with basket-weaving reed and show the group building the Longhouse how to use the reed to lash together the cross pieces for the structure. Below is my sketch of a Longhouse structure with Xs marking where reed would be lashed and knotted around the poles.

So I asked Stan, what did the expert suggest? What knot did he use? Finding out what this knot was could put an end to my steel vs reed debate. The reed’s knot is very important because it must hold as well as — twisted steel wire. If the reed’s knot did hold, then it’s possible I could find similar local materials at other Cocoon sites. Over the next several days I asked Stan what the knot looked like, I showed him pictures from books, and talked about knots I had seen on the web. Finally Stan said, he couldn’t remember the knot except that it was simple like a granny knot. More important to the Lenape Longhouse builders at the Mohonk Preserve was that using reed instead of strips of bark was the only non-authentic part of the Longhouse.

As it turns out even a semi-authentic Longhouse is expensive to maintain in the 21st Century. The Longhouse at Mohonk has since been replaced with a fiberglass replica molded from the original semi-authentic Longhouse that Stan helped build.

When I went to Mohonk in search of this object I anticipated it causing a slight reverberation in my brain. I had hopes that seeing it would set off a scattering of tangential images and thoughts to carry me through several pleasurable days. When I crossed the field at Mohonk’s Spring Farm and came upon the object in its woodland clearing, my first reaction was not, “Wow look at that Lenape Longhouse, but wow that resembles a extra long porta-potty.” The preserve has padlocked it at both ends so it won’t be used for peeing or other more ambitious activities.

However, I wonder if there weren’t so many porta-potties on the Palisades Interstate Parkway, a highway that I take out of the city because its enclosed by trees and seems closer to nature than Route 4 which is enclosed by New Jersey strip malls, and also so many porta-potties just in nature nowadays, would this object have looked instead like a Lenape Longhouse. Would it have served its purpose, at least for me, of sending several glimmering waves full of new knowledge through my brain?

In the 2008/2009 Cocoon I used steel bailing wire to tie the maple saplings into circles,

The steel bailing wire forces the circle to hold its shape.

I also wired the circles to each other creating what forms the Cocoon structure. Although there is a technique to getting the wire tight without snapping it off, wiring the circles isn’t terribly difficult to do with a pair of pliers.

Circles have been wired to each other.

Still, keeping with my idea that the past, pre-industrial past, be brought into the present to actually be used instead of stored as a series of untouchable objects, I began searching for materials other than steel wire for stabilizing the Cocoon.

I haven’t found the materials yet, but I have found that “authentic” is a very important word when talking about the past. Authentic things from the past seemed to be in a higher class than just something useful that someone made to solve a problem. They are ritualized objects that can’t be reproduced and aren’t very handy except to buy and sell and occasionally dust.

So essentially I’m looking for something handy that can be elaborated on or reproduced to replace the bailing wire which is made from molten raw materials and needs an entire industry and an incredible piece of machinery to create.

From spending my childhood summers in upstate New York I remember that the Lenape Tribe used strips of bark when lashing together their Longhouses. Basket weaving reed doesn’t seem far removed from bark strips and more attuned than steel wire to my idea of a Cocoon build reaching into history for solutions to structural challenges. I’m assuming that at least a few of the places where I build the Cocoon will have a type of reed. So perhaps reed is the answer.

Interestingly, when I tell people about wanting to replace the steel with reed many people assume that my wanting to use the reed is about making the Cocoon look authentic, history making an appearance, a kind of cameo role, rather than being of structural use, and they say something like, just cover the steel with the reed don’t actually use it for anything. This is kind of an odd solution, but an interesting way of perceiving reality. Since in fact the Cocoon at well over 20 feet long isn’t an authentic cocoon.

A Community of Individuals

I asked people to find an object that had meaning to them and build a miniature cocoon around it.

The sturdiest mat was made by starting with 6 corn stalks all facing the same direction, then weaving in an over under pattern and alternating the direction of each stalk, and finally tying a double knot at every cross. If a more flexible mat was needed then knots were tied only around the edge.

Here’s a sketch I made while figuring out the best method for weaving mats

36 mats were needed to fully wrap the Cocoon

Corinne choosing the straight and sturdy corn stalks for mats

These are resources I continue to use for building structures, project philosophy, community action, and insect research.

Home Work: Handbuilt Shelter by Lloyd Kahn

Discovering Moths: Nighttime Jewels in Your Own Backyard by John Himmelman

The Briefing Booklet – An Orientation to the Kingian Nonviolence Conflict Reconciliation Program and the The Leaders Manual, by Bernard LaFayette, Jr., and David C. Jehnsen

The Leaders Manual – A Structured Guide & Introduction to Kingian Nonviolence: The Philosophy and Methodology, by Bernard LaFayette, Jr., and David C. Jehnsen

If you are interested in either one of Dr. LaFayette, Jr. and Mr. Jehnsen’s books please click here Institute for Human Rights & Responsibilities, Inc.

Shelters, Shacks, and Shanties: The Classic Guide to Building Wilderness Shelters (Dover Books on Architecture) by Daniel C. Beard

Caterpillars of Eastern North America: A Guide to Identification and Natural History (Princeton Field Guides) by David L. Wagner

Built By Hand by Bill Steen, Athena Steen and Eiko Komatsu, photographs by Yoshio Komatsu

The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Known by Christopher Bollas

Luis Barragan by Yutaka Saito
If you can’t find Luis Barragan by Yutaka Saito look for Yutaka Saito’s Casa Barragan Both these books are for beauty.

August 2009. I used over 300 corn stalks from Kelder’s Farm in upstate New York to weave a skin for this 24 foot by 6 1/2 foot cocoon. People from the community came and built with me or watched and gave advice, or philosophized.

Close up of a corn stalk mat

The beauty of using a material like corn stalks to weave mats is their flexibility. Later, when the mats are tied to the Cocoon structure they can be wrapped tight to make a form fitting skin.