Gallery gang goes gaga for Goldsworthy

Sculptor Reuben Margolin, determined to use natural materials for a kinetic “Wave” sculpture at the David Brower Center in Berkeley, searched fruitlessly in local parks for tule reeds, which American Indians once used to build. Finally, his father, publisher and scholar of Indians Malcolm Margolin, directed him to Charlie Kennard, a British-born Marin County basketmaker with a “houseful of native materials.” Kennard offered him a bundle of dried tule – “It smelled delicious. I cut a piece; it was easy to cut” – but at first, Margolin, determined to forage for his own and “hang out in the wilderness,” declined. When Kennard explained the difficulties of harvesting fresh tule growing amidst tough old tule, Margolin changed his mind and accepted. “Suddenly it occurred to me that maybe part of tule was generosity, and that’s one of the things I had to learn about it. … And that’s what made the whole thing happen.”

(Original Article)