THE PHILOSOPHER’S ABODE JON BROOKS

half hour, 18 miles, and worlds away from that Scandinavian retreat, I stumble into the land of Jon Brooks. The first hint that I’m getting close: a pair of brightly trimmed studios. A bit farther on, a lineup of twisted sculptures rises out of the landscape.

Suddenly, there it is. A mischievous little home. If it could gambol, it would. As it is, it unfurls from the snow like an Alice in Wonderland caterpillar wrapped in aging wooden shingles. A giant peace sign hovers near the entrance. The round, mosaictiled chimney looks like a crazy oversize stamen rendered by Gaudi. Altogether, it feels assertive and, well … extremely contented.

“I didn’t want to live in a box,” Jon says as he greets me, his head snugged into a patterned cap, hands shoved into his pockets.

If there’s one thing this home isn’t, it’s a box. But if there’s one thing Jon gets, it’s wood. Also whimsy. (You’ll know this if you’ve seen his teetering chair sculptures or a chunk of polished furniture he carved from a massive tree trunk.) Both wood and whimsy are here, in abundance. Climb the vertiginous floating stairs, and the living space opens into a yawning cavern that serves as kitchen, dining, living, and music room. Inside what feels like the body of a whale, we see its rib cage, all exposed structure and curving lines. Walls swoop upward, books stuffed into shelves created in the spaces between supports. A knobby ascension of hand-carved stairs ends in a sleeping loft set to one side of the kitchen. Tables and chairs for woodland creatures—all from the hands of Jon— define a dining room, a sitting area. Everything curves.

“I think of a right angle as a missed opportunity,” he says drolly.

A New Hampshire native, this internationally recognized sculptor and furniture maker who marries sinuous shapes with the grain of the wood started his art appreciation in second grade, with classes at the Currier Museum of Art, in Manchester. After graduating from the Rochester Institute of Technology, he moved to San Francisco in 1967. “I was there for the whole nine yards,” he says with a grin. “But I saw a lot of interesting architecture in Sausalito, back-to-theland and creative.”

TABLES AND CHAIRS FOR WOODLAND CREATURES—ALL FROM THE HANDS OF JON BROOKS—DEFINE A DINING ROOM, A SITTING AREA. EVERYTHING CURVES.

He also saw a lot of wood, especially when he moved to Muir Beach. Being, as he says, “strongly attracted to landscape and natural forms,” he began creating heavy carved pieces using natural tree sections, getting wood for free in the forest.

When he and his first wife returned east in 1970, he was ready to put down roots. Land adjacent to his parents’ summer place in New Boston, New Hampshire, became available. Before long, Jon, and anybody who stopped by, could be found knee-deep in a hole, digging a round foundation. “People would come over, we’d hand them a shovel!”

They scavenged wood and lived in a shed while they were building. “We did what we could as we could afford it,” he says. “I had time but no money, and I wasn’t going anywhere near a bank.” Meanwhile, he was also making art and furniture, doing work for galleries and commissions.

The house grew like a living thing. Salvaged storefront windows were pressed into service for the long, narrow window slices that look out to the far fields, offering slivers of solar gain. He bartered with mosaic mural artist Isaiah Zagar, who did the tile work inside the entry and on the chimney. The Western cedar shingles on the exterior came from broken bundles. “This guy in Manchester said, ‘Make me an offer.’ We shingled the whole house for about $100.”

Always, however, there was the complicated matter of a roof. How do you cover something that swoops and banks and angles like a skateboarder? Jon bought time—first with doublecoverage roll roofing and then, when that gave out, with plastic roofing cement and gravel. “In 1992, shortly after my [second] wife, Jami, moved in, it began to leak.” He grimaces. “It all went at once.”

Today, tough rubber roofing material covers the surface. He and Jami finished adding a pretty sunporch in 2015. Jon recently installed solar panels in his field, and he’s proud of the progression, over the years, from outhouse to indoor composting toilet to septic system and a real bathroom.

He readily acknowledges that there’s a certain vulnerability to his home because of its shape. And that he’s bucking historical tradition, which dictates that everything be built square. But then, with a dry twinkle, he waxes poetic: “It’s the serpentine wall and hyperbolic parameter that made it come alive.” Then he points to his head. “Not a lot of right angles in here, either.”