Photo: Orhan Ayyuce

This is an article about a structure and the people who commissioned and designed it. The building was to be a studio, during construction it became an inspiration for Jay McCafferty to hold on to life longer, and at the end when he died, the place was just finished enough for him to see and appreciate. It has since become a sanctuary for his art and a place to burn his presence in this world. All his friends, including me, will remember it as such.

Hollister Ranch is one of the most beautiful stretches of California’s coast. About a few miles above Santa Barbara, its mountainous geography with winding dirt roads and trails take you around to a pure state of mind. A land of fertile hills cascading into the Pacific Ocean where the waves held holy by the surfers. It is an inspirational place that was once the home of indigenous people. 

It’s a blessed and privileged land.

In Jay’s words, “great place to live, great place to die”

Jay McCafferty is a well-known artist for his early conceptual work and his burn paintings. The building was to make and display his work. It is designed by Coy Howard who also did Jay and Ellen McCafferty House in San Pedro.

When Jay retired from teaching as a chair at Harbor College art department, where he inspired many students from underserved communities, he and his wife moved to Hollister Ranch. A strictly parceled land in hundred acre chunks where they could buy a parcel. Jay wanted to have a special studio building where he would continue to hold the magnifying glass in his hand and keep burning the paper just as he did from the rooftop of his Pedro house. That was the idea. 

Coy Howard was hesitant at first. The project took four years to permit and build. 

In the past, the coastal Chumash tribe took the beautiful seashells to Colorado where they are highly sought after, and exchanged them for the gold, equating the two values in that way. 

That was the likeness of the exchange between Jay and Coy, kind of, in my mind.

I have visited Jay many times in the midst of the pandemic, as a friend, and had seen the building in the finishing stages. I witnessed how an appreciation of the emerging building was one of his few joys. It helped keep him alive as if it was medicine for him.

For Jay, death was an everyday conversation. Many times I visited him I wanted to see it myself if it could turn into a pearl of bigger wisdom in my own life. If you have the right attitude, you can, Jay taught me. I’ve seen it in him. He dissipated a grand spirit, even in the direst situation of a terminal illness. His last words of advice to me were, “fight like hell.”

We talked quite a bit about the building. I observed him in total peace and calm, in and around the nearly finished studio space, wanting to do his art in a trance-like experience.

For Jay, it was a building that enabled and facilitated him to the depths of his art. It was very befitting for his work.

“When I went looking around this place and I looked up there I said, 'that is a fabulous building spot. And, this is what I want... I want a place where I can see the work and then a place to make it. And, I want it to be something iconic.' The only requirement for Coy was to design something iconic. I did not have any preconditions about what it would make me feel like. I got this special land and I wanted to build something that would be a place where I can make my art. And, when I spent a few days doing it, it felt like going to a church. Being able to pray in a great church. I mean, it does not matter if you are praying in front of a little tree, but having something magnificent was really it, I only did it three or four times and it was not intimidating. I had something to live up to... that I wish I had more time left.”

At times we talked about what kept this project going during such illness. The answer was clear, “I was a surfer as a kid. And I always loved this place. And long story short, we came up and looked at it. And there were about a hundred thirty-seven parcels of the zone. A hundred-acre parcels. And you can only build one house on it. So I did not think we could do it, but we did it. We came up here as a vacation thing and then we got enough money to build a place to work. So, we spent four years getting permits and plans and all that stuff. And then I got sick and it has all changed.”

Last I visited Jay I asked, “what was the thing you got out of this process? Is this like a metaphor for life or a conclusion of something?”

He looked at me from behind the sliding door screen where he was resting on a hospital bed and said, “that is a good question. It has only been asked a couple of times. I have committed myself to not having children. I committed myself to be an artist which means being very selfish. And the word selfish, I think by many people's mind means... not good. But you look in your wallet and you see your driver's license. You are not your license. So being an artist is searching for yourself. My first loyalty is to my art and the second is my wife. And it has been that way. Lately, since I have been sick, It has been a hundred percent, my wife. Because if she was not here, I would be dead. It is a lot of work to stay alive right now. I am learning so much about life by fighting for it.”

I added to Jay’s words, “The studio building becomes also an enabler to do that which maybe is different from your work. You are a painter. You are an artist, sculptor, and all that. This one is a different kind of medium. It does certain things to you.”

He looked at me again and said, “It is such a miraculous structure. And what is covered up in it is amazing.” 

He took a breath and said again, “It is just such a lovely place to die in.”

I asked Jay what he sees in the structure? He said, “it’s perfect.” 

Then he turned the question to me, “what do you think?” I said, without much thinking, “it is inimitably beautiful.” I could say a lot more of its oneness with the hills and vistas around it, how the building evolves around and away through a visual expansion, pulling you through its thresholds, connected interiors and exteriors, and pauses. I would add, down to the line thicknesses of the shadows, and the playfulness of all the curves. More so I could add, its highly refined perspective compositions and textures, some smooth and some rough but in a communicative state with each other.

While my mind was going through those in short pockets, I concluded my answer in three words, “this is the art of architecture.” And Jay said, “you are right.” And added, “so, Coy kept building. I looked at and there was no reference to any other architecture. But I let it play out. Frank Lloyd Wright was dualistic, it either was Yin or Yang. And Coy has three parts. I asked, “Yin, Yang, and what?” Jay said, “it is art. Any time we try to describe it, it disappears. But it is that blend, it is not just off and on.”

What is architecture when it’s compared to art? Coy doesn’t describe it but I sense his way of talking about the geography, short takes on the plan, breaking the building with series of thresholds, topographic references, all there, its blur and clarity conversing and bridging physical and emotional space in sensorial moments. He is the master of internalizing everything and meticulously letting them out in a carefully constructed poetic pace and not freezing them anywhere. The building keeps going in an all-around composition further than its sides, top to bottom. It is the result of extraordinary control of sequential processes. The studio is energized by ambiguity and design innocence, it is not so much that everything is pre-conceived. There is a lot of on-site processed design work Jay has constructively watched from his wheelchair and never interfered with.

The design went on until it became a fascinating building and that is a characteristic of Coy’s work that I understood.

The hand-chopped 2x4 keeps moving all the while knowing where it came from. It submits to the land it crowns. That is what Jay wanted all along and Coy made it happen. 

Somewhere they met, they exchanged precious gold with priceless seashells.