At a time in history when many feel divorced from our natural environment and the material intelligence embedded in making processes, J.B. Blunk looms large as an inspiration. His artistic career began when he was demobilized from the Korean War, and (after a fortuitous encounter with the sculptor Isamu Noguchi) took up an apprenticeship with a Japanese master potter. On returning to the USA, he made an extraordinary decision, finding a patch of land in Inverness, California, and creating his own home there. Years before the idea of “tuning in and dropping out” became a counterculture cliché, Blunk was living a rigorous, self-reliant, creative life. He sculpted monumental works in salvaged timbers and root structures, and also dug local clay and made sensitively rendered pottery. His work is a quintessential statement of American individualism.