Cob: experience is overrated -- an eight-year-old with acookbook could do this stuff!

[Donna Strow]

This is very interesting and I appreciate it.

I'm wondering, though, could the reading of case histories replace some of
the monotony of practice-learning?

Also, a curious learning phenomenon followed me in the development of my
artistic skill  (I'm talking drawing, painting, sculpting.)  I would do a
little art, leave it alone for a few years, and then hit it again to
discover that I'd gotten much better during my hiatus.  I don't actually
have a lot of works to show, only a lot of progress.

I appreciate the importance of getting down the basics in laying cob.  At
one practicum I tugged the teacher by the sleeve to my area of the wall to
make sure I was doing it right.  (By the way, I'm interested in hearing
about all the things people have done wrong!  One such story may already
have saved me from a faux pas in plastering.)

Would you agree, though, that, at some point prior to finishing an
appreciable portion of a wall, a student becomes bored and the learning
curve flattens for a long, monotonous time?

"To make that pile into a building
that is truly what it COULD be is a blending discipline, knowledge, skill
and art."  Could you elaborate on this?  Are you talking about an enhanced
functionality that flows from skill rather than from planning or technique?
Even though I draw pictures, so you'd think I'd have enough analogous
material to understand such things, it mystifies me sometimes.  Like, once
an art teacher answered my how-to question by saying that I simply didn't
have the skill to address a certain problem; and I've been thinking all
along that the key to these problems is technique, not skill.  (A
photographic representation would be considered skillful enough, but the
camera itself has technique but no skill!)  Still, the thing that builds in
the years between my works *is* skill, and it enhances.  Well, but it
enhances only with regard to the form or appearance of a work, but that's
neither here nor there because that's the point of artwork.  So I guess I
understand skill somewhat, but only as a means of following technique and
usually by way of beautifying a thing.  (Here is a knockoff of a Romney I
did in crayon while sick in bed a few years ago
http://www.bcpl.net/~dstrow/craya.gif )

Without skill, faced with a pile of dirt, my thought would be to plan in
advance for what I wanted to do, think about some contingencies (can't get
'em all,) plunge ahead and then, when faced with some unforseen quandary,
depend on things besides skill such as ingenuity, other people's ideas,
stories and analogs, and the wisdom of my years, to get me through.  I might
not make the Mona Lisa of barns, but I never fancied anyone needed a great
work of barn art.

That sounds awful.  You probably make great works of barn art.  The folks at
Sequatchie Valley Institute do too.  Praise the Lord as you are called.  Me,
I ... need a barn, even in plain vanilla.  And I'd like to help my neighbors
to adopt Natural Building technologies.  Am I being too cockey in just
plunging ahead, armed to the teeth with stories but lacking the skill that
comes with embracing the monotony over the years?

"The
many variables to be taken into account can only be learned by doing so in
many different situations. "  Can you elaborate on this one, too?  From what
I hear, computers have been programmed to do a great many things that people
once felt had to be "learned."  Can a human learn more from "code" without
so much exercise?

" There
is so much to learn and the nuances of it all are HUGE."  Please tell me
about some nuances.  As I read about them, I'd like to consider whether I'm
learning enough from reading, or whether I'd need to try expiraments.

It just occurred to me that those silly "labs" in high school might have
contributed to this "tell-me" mindset I have.


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-coblist at deatech.com [mailto:owner-coblist at deatech.com]On
Behalf Of otherfish
Sent: Sunday, August 10, 2003 4:30 PM
To: coblist at deatech.com
Subject: Re: Cob: experience is overrated -- an eight-year-old with
acookbook could do this stuff!


To Donna & all,

Recently Donna wrote:
<<
 ..........there isn't much more to be said for experience in Natural
Building!!  The workshop consisted of classes and practica.  The classes
were instructive but the practica were monotinous and hardly at all
instructive...................experience is overrated and all they really
need to do is take their class notes home and build their own barns!
>>

I feel compelled to comment:
While in concept, a negation of the value of experience could be accurate,
there is in fact something to be said for the act of learning.  Cob is
relatively simple and it does not take long to learn the BASICS.  Hovever
there is more to a cob building than just mixing and stacking the mud.  The
many variables to be taken into account can only be learned by doing so in
many different situations.   As in so many things, the more you build with
cob the better at it you will become.  A correlary is also true: a little
knowledge mixed with overconfidence is potentially dangerous.

I've been designing and building in one form or another for over 50 years,
and in many ways, I'm just truly beginnig to understand the implications of
what I do.  In my youthful arrogance, I thought I was the hottest thing
going.  Then in time came the daunting realization that making even the
first decision of a project defines and limits the final outcome.  The act
of putting pencil to paper or pick to the ground can go a zillion different
directions - but the truly limiting factor is what's between your ears.

Before I learned cob, a pile of dirt just looked like a pile of dirt.  Now I
see a building.  But to get there requires a lot of different processes to
happen in some fairly specific orders.  To make that pile into a building
that is truly what it COULD be is a blending discipline, knowledge, skill
and art.

There is a reason the apprentice / journeyman / master path came to be so
long ago.  And a reason it still exists if one is truthful about it.  There
is so much to learn and the nuances of it all are HUGE.  Impatince hinders.

I've worked cobbing next to people who were totally cluless and their work
had to be removed lest it compromise the wall.......while others got it
right away, but even then, those quick folks still had lots to learn.  The
traditional ways of building with non industrial products - that is to say,
Natural Building, have been lost to us.  Pre industrial builders stood on
the work of those who came before.  Their understanding of their materials
and methods were learned from having been done over and over and over, till
only those ways that truly worked survived to be used.  This in many ways is
where we find ourselves as the lovers and fools of our devotion.  To be a
natural builder in this time means to be a learner, inventor and teacher and
all at the same time.  Yet at the same time, there are so many principals of
building that hold true from the hard won past that to learn them is
essential.

john fordice