Kutz Spares a Few Sentences

The homes built by Mike Kutz exemplify what is meant by a “Methow Home”. I recently attended a town-planning meeting with fifty of my neighbors, and that’s a respectable portion. Two slides of contrasting styles were shown to represent opposing directions our town might go while development expands under careful watch. Accompanied by spontaneous applause, the first slide showed a cluster of Kutz homes: the eaves were close to the ground and there wasn’t a garage door to be seen. A path meanders between the several dwellings through xeriscaped mounds of bunch grasses. The second photograph was of a knot of new homes that belong in just about any tightly packed suburb in America. The second of two slides elicited groans even though the builder efficiently exploited every available square foot of land, with plenty of driveway for vehicles that could be easily gobbled into a two-car garage in the front.

As far as I know, a Methow Home is one to be lived in comfortably and without pretension, one that is in scale to the land, sociable, and one that is naturally warm because of the materials. Such a home is made less of sheetrock and vinyl than earthy products like real wood and stone, concrete and stressed metal. Abundant square feet count less than quality and attention to detail. A home built by Kutz is scarcely visible at all because its log rafters are grayed like the bark on the trees, and the stucco exterior seems to grow up from the ground like a large weather-beaten rock. I think that Kutz builds the kind of home that a lot of craftspeople would enjoy living in, because a metal worker can probably understand that he understands wood, and one comfortable in a nursery would be pleased with the way he makes the most of light and shade. With Kutz, a building is something very personal, a part of the family and not a box to keep treasures and people in.

I readily acknowledge that talking about work means very little in comparison to doing it. It is better for a craftsperson to shrug over the shoulder as if to say, “can’t you tell what I think?” As long as people that talk for a living largely run things, it might be useful for recluses to say something from time to time or everything will be ruined by people with louder means than taste. Hence the locally popular bumper sticker that someone crafted a few years ago asking, “What would Kutz do?”

We moved here two and a half years ago and I didn’t know what Kutz would do then. I had never met him. I still hadn’t met him that I know of, though we might have passed each other at the lumberyard, when I called him a few days ago and left a message for him asking if he’d be interested in contributing to my journal. I had seen his work by now and I felt I knew him in a way.

There are things Kutz wouldn’t do. He wouldn’t take over farmland for a large-scale sub development. Despite current economic conditions, this is a debate that is sure to return to America’s town halls before too long. Kutz would buy rejected lumber because it was crooked and he’d make something beautiful out of it. He’d build modest housing in style. This is why when I saw a Hummer bearing the sticker, “What would Kutz do”, probably because the white letters on a black background matched the paint job on the SUV, I thought that driving that particular rig, with that particular bumper sticker on it, was something Kutz would never do. But I don’t think there are any loyalty oaths to swear before any old body can get a Kutz sticker. His name isn’t a church.

We spoke to each other on the third try by telephone and I asked him if he would write something about why he does what he does.

KUTZ: I’d hope that what I build explains, if it needs to be explained, why I do what I do.

KC: I think it does. That’s why I called.

KUTZ: I’ve written some poetry before, but really, I don’t like to talk about what I do. I mean you can interview me if you want, but I don’t want to write anything. If you asked me in the winter it might be different, but right now I am working and I’m not in the frame of mind for contemplating it. You’re busy as I am, I’d guess.

KC: Yes, but just to say something in your own words, anything at all that might be relevant to you would be valuable. I should point out that the point is not for more work. To describe the reasons we do what we do might do some good, considering the various way things can always go, if you are interested. Can I interest you in talking over a drink?

KUTZ: I don’t drink anymore, but I’ll talk to you about it some more, whenever you want that we both feel able to take the time. We could talk about concrete countertops. We could talk about stone. I've seen some of your work. There’s not much for us to say to the other about it. Everything we do is our religion isn’t it? We just do what we do don’t we, for every one of our reasons put together.

I figured we’d talk more, I hoped we would, but I wonder what else there is to say right now. He mentioned other things, but I think it is best for now that I let him get back to doing what Kutz would do. I wasn’t recording the conversation and I lack experience for interviewing. This is all I can remember and I’ve probably gotten several specifics wrong. Maybe I’ll get back to him when the evenings are long in the winter, and talking is the better way to be sociable. Meantime, consider this an affirmative bumper sticker pasted to my hands.