Talking Story Seat at Heron Shadow
The Heart Of The Talking Story Seat
Concluding a multi year artistic journey and weaving between personal family legacy in wood and honoring the culturally reviving continuity of a partnership working alongside The bay areas prominent TCC (The Cultural Conservancy) at their Heron Shadow location in Sonoma County, on the ancestral lands of the Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo Peoples of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. A collaborative project bringing a 2000 year old year old yellow alaskan cedar log, with much history, into the envisioned ‘talking story seat’ to be in placed permanently in the Heron Shadows ‘Sculpture Garden of native science and learning’.
Part of this adventure was reviving this historical cedar which was once a full sized ‘Healing Whale Pole’ carved by Tonu-Shane and 20 years later, his son, Koa Stevens continued the legacy working on this project, transforming it into a vessel to carry stories into the community, thus a prominent seat to hold the orator while speaking on the many important topics held in perpetuity with those at Heron Shadow was commenced.
After the journey of first relocating this monolithic piece of crystalized sunshine and wood grain in its archival state of ‘legacy art’ to Heron Shadow, we had to Shape and reshape, sculpt and seal and invite the local community and staff for multiple carving workshops held onsite. The intention was to involve the community of Heron Shadow to participate during the curation of this work to imbue this vision with the local mana and energy for the future stories to be transmitted.
The vision: from the heart of the talking seat, where multiple stories converge and come to life, stepping back into a time when oration was the precipice of record keeping and bridging that continuum into our present world, giving knowledge and wisdom opportunities to express.
The brief short story on this 2000-year-old Yellow Alaskan Cedar…
This particular piece and her sisters were once a floating pier in the SF Bay where an explosion submerged the family into the silty depths around July 17, 1944 at ‘Port Chicago’. Around the early 1990’s they were recovered by surprise while being dredged, preserved by their silty hibernation. At this time Tonu-Shane, a long-time artist-in-residence with The Cultural Conservancy, who was a prominent wood sculptor in the Bay Area, was contacted about these logs and commenced a life time of monolithic healing poles which have connected across the Country from a memorial to the 911 firefighters now at the Bronx Zoo in New York, to a healing pole sent to Indian Canyon, in Hollister, Ca to honor the local Ohlone of the Bay Area, a Kohola Whale pole which was set in the Presido in SF, a pole which went to the Winnemen Wintu in Mount Shasta, CA and more.
From this convergence back to the land, these Yellow Alaskan Cedars have been sculpted and revived into many forms and shared with bounty and awe.
The talking story seat at Heron Shadow was first formed into a Whale, had a temporary home in the SF Presidio and eventually morphed into thirds and re-sculpted yet again to find a final dock at Heron Shadow to host the stories yearning to be shared through storytelling with an aromatic halo.
Koa Stevens, the son of Tonu, has continued the legacy of carving these logs which he was raised around as a youth. Through this project with Heron Shadow, he has been raising the story one mallet at a time.
From the heartwood of this indulgent specimen, as it was sculpted and chiseled, a unique storytelling incense was crafted by Koa Stevens, blending alongside with the woods of three other large sculptural art pieces from an Arizonian Alligator Juniper, California Cypress and a Himalayan Cedar from California, with copal, clove and turmeric. Together these Sculptures align to lift the narration of tale after whale tail, intended as a harmonious guide to send the orations, spoken at the talking story seat, up and into the world to be shared and experienced.
