Roger Van De Vanter

I did a "photo essay" recently regarding this fine gentleman.

What i mean by photo essay, is a story in text accompanied by a photo album.
I sent that out to a lot of friends in the form of an email with a link to the photo gallery. We thought this should be posted on the Blog as well. So, if you've been there, done that, ignore. If you haven't, enjoy!

Here is the text with the link to the photos included near the end:

Roger Van De Vanter

So, Tracy saw an add on Maui Craigslist titled something like, “Antique/artiste estate SALE (Haiku)”

Haiku is where we live so Tracy perked right up, next morning we drove right up......and only about 6 blocks up from where we live. Another new adventure had begun!

We arrived at 7:00am and there were only a couple other people there so we were able to meet Roger right away and begin talking, and listening, and finding out things like, nothing had a price tag, only he could tell you a price and it took him a long time, telling stories about the item, eyes darting around and drifting off into other items and their stories and then if he wasn't interrupted too often during all of that, maybe you could come to some price agreement.

His place was covered with a huge collection of his pottery.. It also included shelves of bonsai plants – some that he'd been growing for 45 years, and handmade furniture, rare and valuable Chinese furniture, made, well, by.......Chinese, a long time ago. Also, hand made and painted kites, lot's of potted bamboo and, and.....and just amazing! Everything chaotically placed and piled around his yard on tables and shelves, in boxes and shipping containers – you get the picture. He is the epitome of mad genius, artist-potter.

My mind was reeling with memories of another mad genius artist-potter of whom I was made aware a few years ago by a good friend. My friend and his family have been collecting the works of this potter for several years. Named George Ohr and referred to as the “Mad Potter of Biloxi,”he is a one of a kind, for sure. If you are interested, do an online search for him and check his story and his work. Totally eccentric, totally mad and utterly fascinating.

Who is Roger Van De Vanter, you ask?

He's an artist, a potter, a shoe maker (known for creating the multi-colored, layered rubber in elevated shoes which, at the time, Cher made popular), a self-proclaimed bamboo freak, a bonsai master, a kinetic sculptor aka mobile maker (see more about this in the photo gallery), a kite maker and competition kite flier (more about this in the gallery as well), a wood worker, to include carving and furniture making and a surfer..............but mostly a potter.

Roger's Bio reveals a history of art school study, 3 year apprenticeship with Tasho Shimeoko (master potter and living legend) in Gefu, Japan, owner of pottery studios, a cobblery studio and Professor of Fine Arts/Ceramics at the College of the Desert in Palm Desert, California. In 2000 he left the Laguna Beach area of California and moved to Haiku in Maui. His work has been purchased and exhibited by many private collectors in the United States, Japan, the White House, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Now he is moving back to California to continue his business, “Eccentric Ceramics” in Oceanside. We got to know him really fast, I took a bunch of photos and did several prints as gifts to him and we are sad to have met such a dynamic, interesting character and new but very close friend just days before his departure.

So it goes.

The photo gallery that was created to accompany this writing is located here:

https://neilvonhof.smugmug.com/photos/swfpopup.mg?AlbumKey=XcN29p

Cut and paste this link in your browser. It takes you to a slide show format. You can control the speed or abort the slide show and review the photo's in various other ways by hovering over the show so that the film strip pops up at the top and over to right you can click on “Return to Gallery,” Note that there are comments beneath each photo.

Where's the Beach?

Our most favorite, local beach has pretty much vanished! This whole section of Baldwin Beach has disappeared. Here are the pics from 'before', taken in May and 'after' taken yesterday.

All the sand you see here in this picture taken by our friend Pamela Dore is now gone - all the way back to the tree line, the whole distance of the tree line down to the end and even the spot where Pamela was standing when she took this - gone. The camera is facing east in this picture.

The picture below was taken from right at the edge of the tree line pretty much down at the end of the trees looking back (west) right at the place where Pamela was standing in May.

Here it is now, taken from just in the tree line looking west. That sand in the first picture is all really gone. All those logs, stumps and roots showing were completely buried under a few feet of sand back in May and that sort of little bay was all beach covering all the water you see in that little bay now and far out past that point of sand furthest back in the picture. The swimmer you see would be standing on the beach if this were back in May.

Wha happen??? So far we aren't really sure. However, the best story we've heard so far is that this happens every summer when the trade winds shift so that they are coming more from due east (behind the photographer in this picture) and the wind and the waves wash all that sand west down around that point to another part of the beach. Then as winter comes the winds shift, coming more from the north and northeast and move the sand back. We shall see............

It's still nice there however, We sat under the trees in the shade at a point where there was clear entry into the water and if the beach was there on a day like this there would have been lots of people and a full parking lot. We counted only about 10 people in the whole area. Nice and peaceful, had a great swim and a great day.

First Snorkel With Underwater Camera

We love snorkeling and we see so many fish and other sea creatures that we finally made the plunge (npi) and got a little underwater camera set up.
Ended up with this camera:  Nikon Coolpix S610  and this underwater housing: Fantasea S-610
The setup functioned well (no leaks) but it's very hard to get good shots mostly because all the reflections off of the water proof housing make seeing the LCD display nearly impossible so, we just shot a bunch and hoped for the best. The real magic was Photoshop. I was able to rescue these few out of the 50 or 60 shots we took.

Threadfin Butterfly Fish

  Yellow Tangs - click to enlarge and look for the tiny white "tang" back near the tail. There is one on each side and they are razor sharp and there to discourage predators . If beeg fish tries to eat'm, it'll feel that tang and spit 'um right out.

Blackfin Snapper

Green Turtle

Parrot Fish - Hawaiian name Uhu (pronounced ooo'who)

Convict Tang Gang

Christmas Wrasse (click on this one for sure to get a better look)

Herd of Goatfish - they hang together near the surface, close to the shore

Oh yes, almost forgot this most famous creature:

Pointing Tracyus Snorkelus - rarely photographed in her native habitat!