I grew up reading books like the American Boy’s Handy Book cover to cover. The images and illustrations inspired my imagination, and I did my best to replicate the creations, like traps, forts, and slingshots, I saw in them. Days spent in the woods behind my house working on these creations and forts set me down my path to build my own treehouses in 2014. I knew that I wanted to keep that childhood sense of joy and wonder that I felt when I woke up in a fort I built or floated in a pond on a raft I built with friends. I went into the building of the Cinder Cone tree houses with the intention of making a book that combined the spirit of the American Boy’s Handy Book with
@lloyd.kahn shelter books. More so than an art book, I wanted to create something that would inspire others to build their own projects with friends or their families.
This year marks 10 years since the release of The Cinder Cone Book and 11 years since building the tree houses. I still sleep in them every night and still wake up with a sense of childhood joy. A few years ago I shut down my webstore to focus on stop motion and kept the few remaining boxes of books I had left for gifts. On the secondhand market, these books sell for amounts that make me shake my head in disbelief. A few weeks ago, my mom was cleaning out a storage unit in preparation for a move and found some piles of books that got lost in the sauce during the building of the studio at
@moviemountain . I just listed 100 of them on the link in my profile. When they are gone, they will be gone for good. 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
