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About Zenzibar
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Read about Royce and Nita's BIG DREAM! ABOUT THE WEB SITE The Zenzibar Alternative Culture web site was started in 1999 by Royce Carlson. A partnership was formed a little later with Creagan McConnell and Robert Tait. The website grew for awhile and actually began to make some money before the dot com crash of 2000. By the end of 2001 we ran out of money, dissolved the partnership and ceased doing business. The domain, zenzibar.com, was retained by Royce Carlson. He kept a lot of the features of the commercial site going and added links to his personal stuff, too. So, now, it is really the personal web site of Royce Carlson and his wife, Juanita Hull-Carlson. The site still gets about 50,000 visitors per month which is quite good considering it is not promoted at all. On the site you will find the Alternative Culture Directory, left over from the commercial days, this directory has over 6,000 links. Some of the links no longer function. I just don't have time to go through and cull the duds. New sites are added occasionally whenever I get in the mood. Some of the other features left over from the old days are:
HELP US REALIZE OUR BIG DREAM! Our BIG DREAM is to find a place where we can spend the rest of our lives building a habitable sculptural art environment to live in and share with others. With our combined artistic and construction skills we are itching to create something grand and whimsical. We have long been excited about art environments. For over 20 years I have been dreaming. learning, and practicing skills that will help us build a wondrous and unusual environment that, eventually, should be open to the community for its use and enjoyment. At some point we hope it will be spectacular enough to become a public attraction. Now it's time to find a place and start building. Maybe you can help. We are looking for a small-ish parcel of land, no more than 5 acres and maybe as little as 2 acres, where we can build an art environment. We don't need to own the land. We are not opposed to owning land but, if we were to spend our money on buying land, we would not have the money to build anything at all. If you have a large parcel of land and would like to see an unusual project happen on a small part of it, we would love to make it happen. One of our favorite areas for the project (based on recent explorations) is an area of Southern Oregon between Cave Junction, Grants Pass, and Ashland. We like this area because it seems to be a locally sustainable place to live and seems to have some progressive-thinking community. It is mostly rural farmland. We are open to considering other locations, too. Let us know what you have and we can talk about it. A critical requirement is that we can build with minimal government interference (building inspectors, etc). What we construct will be safe, functional, but unusual enough that building inspectors would probably have a fit. This is a long-term project. We want to spend the rest of our lives building it. This means 20 years or more. We plan to utilize our skills and experience with steel, concrete, and mosaic as well as carpentry. We hope to use recycled, repurposed, and salvaged materials as much as possible, including natural materials found on site or nearby. Our design and planning will be flexible to take advantage of the serendipity of creative salvage opportunities. If you are interested, contact us. We should meet several times so we can get to know each other before committing. We are open to discussing a variety of arrangements including caretaking or some other kind of exchange in return for long-term use of a part of your land. To get an idea of what an "art environment" is, I am including links to some of the visionary environments around the world that have inspired us.
You can read about us below and see what we do for fun and for work, what we have accomplished, and get just a glimpse of just how wonderful we are (and humble, too!).
ABOUT ROYCE AND NITA Royce Carlson was born in 1953. He was raised in Southern California and moved to Prescott Arizona in 1991. He has been an artist for 30 years and made his living as a steel sculptor since 2000. Until the sculpture thing took off, he worked in other art media and supported himself with various jobs, many of which were construction related. He has also studied energy and resource efficient building and design for many years. He is also part owner of Van Gogh's Ear gallery - an art gallery in Prescott, AZ. There's more info on his artistic background in his Artist's Bio/Statement. He loves to make things - wacky things. He married Juanita (Nita) in 1998. Juanita Hull-Carlson was born in 1955, and was raised in western Michigan. After a bachelor's degree in Ceramics and Art Ed. she taught art for 10 years, mostly in Michigan, Norway and Portugal. Then after a Master's degree in Illustration from the Savannah College of Art and Design she moved west and met Royce. Currently, her art forms are cement sculpture and found object mosaic. Often these media are taught during Artist in Residencies, sponsored by the Arizona Commission on the Arts. The two primary focus points are building community and raising environmental awareness while making public art. She is also working on a children's book about environmental activism. The illustrations are hand colored, copper plate etchings. See Nita's resume. Visit a blog of our art and creativity adventures - Adventures in the Zone The Zenzibar web site has lots of pictures and information about our fun and professional activities:
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