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One Stone at a Time
Jan Gauvain took her time gathering the ideas and objects what went into her unique dream house
By Michael Barnes
American-Statesman Arts Writer
Thursday, August 29, 2002She wandered, free as a cloud, at age 5 and 8 and 12, through meadows and creeks, gathering stones. Small, cold, round ones -- brilliantly striped -- and larger ones with coarse surfaces a dozen shades of sienna.
Jan Gauvain cherishes memories of a childhood spent amid the sedges of suburban Washington, D.C. Wherever she later relocated -- to college in Massachusetts; on Maryland's eastern shore with her new husband, Stephen; then to St. Petersburg, Fla., with their young family -- the stones, her first "found" art objects, went with her in shoe boxes, plastic tubs, anything she could find.
Eighteen years ago, when Stephen, an ABC Network correspondent on the NASA beat, was transferred to Houston, she was skeptical of extending her lifelong intimate bond with nature.
"Houston was too flat, hot, humid -- not for me," Gauvain recalls.
Doubts about life in Texas vanished when her family, which by then included three sons, spent a night camping along the Blanco River in Wimberley. Watching the moon rise over the water, she converted, like so many before and since, to the natural religion of the Hill Country.
"I felt like I was home at once," Gauvain says. "On the Blanco, I'd found my place in the world."
So the Gauvain family spent every free moment -- holidays, anniversaries, birthdays -- returning to the Blanco. More stones were collected along the riverbed, varied in shape, color and texture by geological stress, exposure to water and air.
After a while, Stephen refused to help transport the hundreds of rocks, which represented her personal history, back to Houston. Gauvain was physically as well as metaphorically carting stones across the face of Texas.
They couldn't have known then that all those stones would return to the Blanco Valley, recycled into a most unusual dream home, MoonRise Ranch, the long-planned retirement home for Jan, Stephen and their sons.
Here tragedy intervenes into the magical Gauvain story. Just before the couple began shopping seriously for land along the Blanco, Stephen died in an automobile accident in 1996.
Honoring her husband's intentions, Gauvain returned to the Hill Country, seeking exactly the right spot, finding it in a triangular, 10-acre former German homestead. The land stretched from a cluster of farm structures in a copse of persimmon and live oaks to a bluff, which drops 30 feet to a rich river-bottom meadow bright with bluebonnets and laurels. From there, the land dropped again to the rippling river, bordered with cyprus and buckeye.
"As I walked on the property, I felt my husband had sent me here," Gauvain, now 53, says.
After the real estate agent left her on the edge of the land, she scattered some of Stephen's ashes. Gauvain determined right then not to rush the house. MoonRise Ranch would be planned and constructed one stone at a time.
She spent a year living in a mobile home on the land, getting to know its rising and falling contours, its sunlight and wind and soils.
"I wanted to find the heart of the land, the place to put the house," she recalled.
Gauvain had intended to hire award-winning Austin architect Mell Lawrence, whom she had met through friends. Overloaded with projects, he recommended François Lévy and Mark Winford, articulate young designers formerly of his office, who had recently established their own firm, Studio Mosaic (www.studiomosaic.com).
"We got lost on the way there," says Lévy. "Since we were an hour late, we were sure we wouldn't get the job."
But the three walked the land, talking about nature, while Winford, 38, and Lévy, 35, made a rudimentary, unscientific survey.
"As soon as they stepped out of the car, I said, `These are the ones,' " Gauvain says. "There was sort of a camaraderie between the two. That was one of the things I really loved. I told them that I was thinking about some places for a house on the land, but wasn't going to tell them where."
After examining each microclimate on the 10 acres, the threesome settled on the bluff's edge, out of sight of the river, but within earshot of the gurgling water.
But what to do for a house? It took client and designers many months of listening, questions and more listening to strike just the right solutions.
"The listening process takes a long time," Lévy says. "It comes from a trust between designers and clients, rather than showing the architect a picture in magazine and saying, `I want it to look just like that.' "
On the land sat an 1841 log cabin connected by a dog run, or open-air passage, with a frame addition dating from the 1860s. Gauvain used it sometimes as a guest house and considered transforming the two sections into "artists' huts."
"I really want to live in it," she told Winford and Lévy.
"Well, why not?" replied the designers.
So they moved the cabin to the edge of the bluff and then built a house around it.
"Jan knew what she wanted," Lévy says. "She just didn't know what it looked like."
Gauvain worried about ruining the cabin, but in fact, she saved it from the elements without disturbing its materials or construction.
"Mark convinced me by saying: `Treat this as a found art object,' " Gauvain says.
In the meantime, Gauvain began to spend more time with Houston-based computer consultant Stanley Tartakov, who became not only her partner in life through marriage but a co-planner on the dream house. They met as the foundation was about to be poured. (Always the enchanter, Gauvain had placed a stone heart in the foundation form.)
A primary puzzle was how to cover so many rooms, new and old, of different sizes and heights. Lévy and Winford devised a parabolic arc of corrugated metal that looks like an overturned ship or, perhaps, a beached whale. It rests on a 92-foot-long curved beam supported by five fat cedar logs, found after much searching in Bastrop.
Constructed in 2000, the 2,700-square-foot house consists of master and guest bedrooms, study, casual living areas, dining room, kitchen and many screened spaces. All this complements Gauvain's generous-hearted impulse to host, to entertain, to share her river life with friends, family and acquaintances. Rooms flow into rooms, but the width of the house at any given point is only one room deep, with the whole necklace-shape series oriented to catch the prevailing southeast winds.
"This house catches the most wonderful breezes," Gauvain says. "We haven't had the air-conditioning on all summer."
One striking feature is a central tower 39 feet high. The base rises from the master bedroom, turns into an office, then an intermediate platform, after which one emerges onto a small rooftop with a ravishing view of the surrounding valley. The tower draws heat out of the lower floors of this living, breathing house.
In the valley below, one finds a vegetable and flower garden, based on 20 feet of soil, surrounded by a high fence to keep out the ubiquitous wildlife. Complicated devices collect and distribute rainwater.
Inside, a curved stone wall embraces the guest shower, which is bathed in natural light from above. The master bath is shaped like a smooth, rock pool in the Blanco River below, and an outdoor shower stands in another stony embrace.
Stanley and Jan married on May 5, 2001, but the house was not yet finished, so the ceremony took place in the vaulting car shed, which Gauvain hopes to turn into an artist's studio. Last October, they moved into the house with Gauvain's youngest son, Dustin (the others had moved off to college).
They decorated the house with a mix of old and new that Gauvain had collected all her life. A spacious, modern kitchen spills into a room that looks untouched since the 1840s on the frontier.
"I don't have anything that matches," Gauvain says.
The designers made clear distinctions between old and new rooms, however, so there is no pretense of faux historical construction.
"While not imitating the old, what's new is very sympathetic with the old," Lévy says. "The new rooms take their cue from the scale and proportion of the original."
From the moment she bought the land, Gauvain has not stopped entertaining.
"She collects friends like found art objects," Winford jokes.
While some guests gather in the usual places -- around the kitchen island or the shady terrace -- almost everyone ends up in the old cabin that lies within the house.
"It has such a warm feel." Gauvain says. "People were born here, got married, passed away. It's rich in personal history."
Preserving and adapting the cabin matches Gauvain's slow, contemplative approach to gathering ideas and physical objects and turning them into art. The rocks from her lifetime collection now are permanently attached to the stonework in fireplaces, door thresholds, entry walls and guest shower at MoonRise Ranch.
"We feel connected to what has been passed down to us," she says of her house. "It connects me back into my life, almost as if I have come full circle. It tells me a story."
mbarnes@statesman.com; 512-445-3647
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