In my travels to the west but never with this kind of a “ . . .

wandering phase,” hiking,

side of Vancouver Island, I found harmony. It worked as a bower, camping, and gathering edible
a great little coffee shop called but it was also a graceful sculp- plants. For 4–5 years he roamed
The Tofitian, with good coffee, ture. It looked like it had grown in the dry desert from Southern
music, and an internet hookup. in the woods. BC to Washington, “ . . . commun-
Next to it was a little shake- The builder, it turned out, was ing with nature.” sculpture with carpentry, and
covered bower. I’d never seen Jan Janzen, and in three of my He came back to Vancouver in next did an extensive remodel of
anything quite like it. The entire trips I photographed his work. the ’80s and worked as a carpen- a tiny A-frame (with greenhouse
structure, posts and beams and Jan was born in the Quesnel ter: “ . . . 90-degree, drywall stuff,” attached) for his wife Thérèse
all, was made of silvery beach Highlands of Caribou County (in but on the side he started doing (see p. 135).
wood, with curved and irregular the heart of British Columbia) wood sculptures. In 1987 he Here on the west coast, he says,
pieces put together ingeniously. and grew up in Vancouver. In the moved to the west coast of he was able to combine carpentry
I’d seen structures where early ’70s, when he was 20, he Vancouver Island. He built a and sculpture, to “. . . marry them
builders had fooled around with left the city for the Okanagan woodshed for his landlady, together.” He could do sculpture,
gnarly and strange-shaped wood, Valley where he went through where he started combining and have it be useful.
If you look closely on the left side of this panorama of the beach, you can see
the shake roof of the gazebo.

Charlotte’s Gazebo
G azebo at Charlotte Disher’s house peeks over trees at
a sandy, driftwood-covered beach on the Pacific Ocean. On the next
page are more photos of this structure.
JAN JANZEN
Bower at Botanical Gardens

Details of gazebo
on previous page

This structure sits next

to a pond at the Tofino
Botanical Gardens.
The lower walls are
sequentially assembled
with no fasteners, like a
Chinese puzzle, with the
last piece being driven in
with a sledgehammer.

130 131
JAN JANZEN

Gazebo at Cable Cove Inn

This gazebo sits on a ledge above a
beautiful narrow cove that opens onto the
ocean. What a great place to anchor your boat!
There’s a magical water-drip spot alongside the
building, a little fern-lined green grotto where the
air is moist and full of negative ions.

Jan installed some of the shakes so that there were

openings for “peek-through views,” but angled so
that water doesn’t enter.

133
JAN JANZEN

Thérèse’s House

Jan’s Cabin
In contrast to Thérèse’s
sparkling, feminine light-filled cozy
nest (opposite page), is Jan’s rustic
guys’ place, with rough floor planks,
work benches, sleeping loft up Japanese boardwalk philosophy:
Pathways should never go straight.
sculptured stairs, and his search-
and-rescue pack by the door. A great
place to sit by the cheery fire on a
cold night. It was built “ . . . of 90% onto the logs, onto four other logs Gift Shop
salvaged material.”
“As I was finishing it, nailing the
and then onto the repositioned
original logs, a distance of 70 feet in Tofino
last shake on the roof, a surveyor onto his own property. “None
came along.” Bad news: the building of the windows even broke.” His
was completely on his neighbors’ next-door neighbors watched the
land. What else to do but move it? whole process. He says they must
He jacked up the building, slid four have figured that if he could move
logs underneath, put axle grease a building that far and have it hold
on them, and with a come-along, together, it must be structurally
a 5-wheel block-and-tackle, and 1” sound, and they asked Jan to build a
steel cable, skidded the building up house for them (see pp. 138–39).

134 135
JAN JANZEN

This little
cabin was
built almost
entirely from
a cedar tree
that had
been lying
nearby.

Door latch and handle

Margaret’s Cabin
This little cabin was built almost entirely from a cedar tree that
had been lying nearby. Framing, flooring, shakes. Maybe that’s what makes the Stairs to loft
building so harmonious.
Jan had told me this and, as I was climbing
around inside and out shooting photos, I had
a vision of the tree, a solid chunk of wood, cut
up, rearranged, and expanded to make this
cozy space. (It was a cold, wet day and the fire
burning inside made it warm and homey.)

Jan’s license plate Copper sheet inlaid into floor

136
JAN JANZEN

End of girder morphs into hummingbird.

The Crocker House

This home was built on property adjacent to Jan’s.
It’s got a myriad of details that delight and amuse. He told me his
fantasy in building was to have a detail draw you in, so that as you
looked at it, it would lead to other details, and so on. “Details
within details,” he says, and it sure works that way here.

On this table you can see some of the original

bark of the log from which the table was built. In
carving, sculpture, making furniture, “ . . . with
any wood I work, I try to leave at least one part
of it unworked to show the natural texture.”
Mirror frame by Robinson Cook
139