On September 11, 2001 I was standing in the center of Times Square I was loading a show called the women this was the first day the actors would be in rehearsal. 

Our shop was two blocks away and I would use these dollies to push things and built in the shop into the rehearsal spaces are on just to stage there at 42nd St. an American Airlines theater in the building right next to it where we had rehearsal spaces. I’m looking up because other people are looking up at the big screen in the center of Times Square and they’re showing what looks like fire I believe coming out the side of a building or smoke over something like this and they’re talking about a plane and I’m not on the first thought that went through my head was like how could a plane ever be allowed to fly low around the buildings in New York City like it just didn’t seem possible it’s not like the moment I enter

The air space it seem like someone will be all over them and we’re watching it and we’re just like this is crazy and then I remember talking about the second plane and watching it in your life coming in and I remember just kind of being at all like what is going on knowing instinctually that this was some kind of attack I think everyone was merely being like OK this is some kind of attack like nothing we’ve always been waiting for New York City is under attack and what is going on and you can see the panic right away and we were merely telling people to go home knowing that New York is shut down transportation wise really quickly and so we went to the shop or I went to the shop which was in the basement of this building on I believe 39th St.At the time I live on 43rd St. and worked on 42nd St. so it was a fairly simple

Have Any Change?

I spent the day down in the shop thinking about where I am in doing for the past decade working in theater working in movies working an opera creating fake worlds with fake histories for actors to play fake stories and it has been fascinating but I really wanted to build something that lasted I have watched so many of the things that I had made going to the dumpster at the end of a show it even became a passion of mine to try to create it’s so good that someone would want to buy it or take it home just to continue it/the work. Good afternoon 11 after 9/11 I really wanted to build something that stayed on the earth that lasted in I had always dreamed of building a house since I was a kid my parents were tell me that I would draw our plan my house with these amazing things like bowling alleys in the basement is and so on can’t dreams right building my first house it was similar 

I got to build it from the ground up in an empty space of land at the corner of nowhere on the edge of Miami County Miami Dade County and the Everglades in an area called the Redlin farming district where most houses had to be on 5 acres or more and no communication zero developments would be allowed to be built there and this was during the first building boom into the real estate Mobile and I got an early right before everything went crazy so you know the land was still affordable and the prices of material were still affordable but I had a lot of support and that to me is the work of God that’s the power of the universe you know giving you what you need to change what you want to achieve and I was surrounded by nothing but support an allowance to follow this dream of mine and create something that really inspired me and I took advantage of the moment by really focusing on all of the diesel really focusing on the artwork of it incorporating the building into the land into the dimensions of north south east and west the rising and setting of the song all of these things into the design of the house it was only one year after 911 that I was laying out rocks in the shape of him the house that I Mayfield one day and walking through imaginary hallways walking into imaginary bedrooms and imagining imaginary life a life where I add all points and times was raising a child I didn’t see perfectly how I would be involved other than I would give my whole life to that child.

And this was it.
An empty 2.5 acres piece of land  on the edge of Miami and the Florida Everglades. An area called the Redland Farming District. At the end of Eureka.

So when I was building or designing I thought about the child’s bedroom I thought about waking and sleeping I thought about the need for noise and privacy I thought about sunlight and beauty outside looking in and inside looking out so I built it on the corner of the north east side of the house outside was in the Zack deck surrounded by gardens that I could carve in the shapes they were like paintings through the windows and one in the visual of my child to be art to be stimulating as they grew from maybe two adults and I have been reading many books on the brain development and sensory development and all of these things like I had come across an article about how kids and native society is living in the jungles in the forest who run barefoot have a greater sense of balance and muscle function because of all these nerve endings in their feet in a stimulated by all the texture on the ground not to mention that when they are crawling i’m sitting on the floor as babies they have much more I stimulating shapes and colors to break down and modify in their minds creating higher synopsis and that her brain function is the actual things I thought about. I thought about the sun rising into their bedroom and shining on them in their bed because of natural circadian rhythm development I thought about the tile on the floor and the patterns that I would cut underline the colors that I would use I laid out many different variations until I found some that seemed appealing it seems to tell a history and this is where I really apply a lots of my skills from the theater world by having some type of story it was my story I didn’t like the hallway of my grandmothers house how the bedrooms were the doorways I did a mean entrance library like one of my favorite houses in childhood I had a librarian I didn’t know the tile in the in the long lines of the deck in the word as symmetrical and blending into nature as I could before my love of not impeding me structure about adding to it I I this Was an influence type of feeling I had from my favorite designer an architect Frank Loyd Wright so I think that work is very reflective she’s not honored and you know studied in this work I was really trying to deal with long lines blending into horizons and having material type blending’s from the earth to the building where it seem to grow from the same structure