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How Finca Luna Nueva Lodge Became a Museum of Bamboo Whimsy and Art
We celebrate our 30th Anniversary by recognizing some of the great souls who have contributed to the Finca Luna Nueva experience. Today we honor our beloved friend and bamboo maestro Brian Erickson, whose artistry suffuses virtually all of our inhabited spaces. Tall, lean, resilient, handsome, strong, ancient yet forever young: adjectives describing both Brian and his bamboo medium.
With his wife Patricia, of blessed memory, Brian made a home devoted to art and nature in San Francisco. Brian worked as a carpenter and builder from 1970 to the mid 1980s, and in 1986 they traveled to Nicaragua to help support the Sandanista resistance during the Contra War. Their trip to Nicaragua was inspired by their meeting with bamboo scholar David Farrelly, whose work The Book of Bamboo helped prepare the Ericksons for a life of service to bamboo and the world.
The geopolitical saga of the Contra War is long and tragic, but on a personal level it served as a pivot for the Ericksons. They moved on from Nicaragua to the peaceful land of Costa Rica, where Patricia’s paintings of their Afro-Caribbean life captured their new love for bamboo and la Pura Vida. Brian apprenticed with the Taiwanese Bamboo Technical Mission, where he began his study of bamboo furniture crafting. He then became a furniture designer with the National Bamboo Project at Los Diamantes, and in 1999 he set up his bamboo farm and workshop on the Rio Blanco west of Guapiles, about an hour away from the Caribbean town of Limón. Decades of devotion to bamboo and furniture crafting led to exhibits and publications around the world, including furniture expositions in the National Theater and National Gallery of Costa Rica.
Our founder, Steven Farrell, connected with Brian in the mid 1990s. Steven first bought young guadua bamboo plants, and then in 2010 Brian was our source for twenty-two species of bamboo that we planted in our Sacred Seeds Sanctuary and around the farm. Our bamboo plants are now towering giants, but they are all children of the bamboo plants collected by Brian over many decades.
We’ve turned to Brian over the years to solve some knotty challenges. When we created our restaurant and lounge, we placed the structure on a slender finger of land next to our pool. There wasn’t much room for a bar, but Brian optimized the space with a clever black bamboo bar and liquor display.
That same building was perched a few feet up from the pool deck, and we knew we had to create a railing for security. Adult guests are, well, drinking, and kids will be kids. Brian figured out how to create a railing that was not only secure, but became an artistic focal point for the building. You’ll notice how he incorporated bamboo pieces – known as culms – that he twisted into curved forms over a four to five year period. Bamboos grow quickly and can engage in a form of yoga with their environment. They will bend in response to growth restrictions, so Brian has encouraged – okay, disciplined – bamboo to grow inside the curves of old tires. It takes years to create the curves you see in the railings and wall hangings at the restaurant, and Luna is the beneficiary of Brian’s patient bamboo cultivation.
You’ll also see on the ends of the railings little bamboo creatures that Brian has birthed in his bamboo nursery. Brian used to make toys when he lived in the United States, and whimsy still bubbles up in all his creativity. In Costa Rica we call these mythological creatures duendes, and you’ll see Brian’s duendes all around the lodge. Hey, you might even see real duendes in our fields and forests! Magic abounds here at Finca Luna Nueva….
Brian also introduced us to Jörg Stamm, one of the world’s most admired bamboo builders. Jörg is responsible for some of the genius bamboo buildings at the legendary Green School in Bali, and he reached out to Brian with a wild idea for a bamboo observation tower using the self-reinforcing strength of a geometric form called hyperbolic paraboloid. That’s a special form generated by a mathematical formula, but it’s one you’ve all seen in grocery stores and in snack boxes: a Pringles potato chip. The reason those chips have that form is they don’t break, and it’s appropriate that the engineer who invented the machine that cooks those chips was also a science fiction and fantasy writer. Jörg is also, in his way, a creator of fantasy, and Brian felt that Finca Luna Nueva was just the right fantasy land for a “flying Pringles potato chip in the sky” bamboo observation tower. That tower now graces the edge of our farm as it connects with the Rio Chachagua corridor overlooking the Children’s Eternal Rainforest and the Arenal Volcano.
Next up: our new reception, built on the site our our old reception on a hillside overlooking the Lunita Stream that flows through our property. We wanted to build with the regenerative miracle bamboo, and much of the bamboo for this structure came right from a hillside near the new reception. Brian cured it using the Boucherie process, which saturates the culms with a mixture of camphor, borax, and boric acid. Bamboo, of course, is just a huge blade of grass, and we need to protect it from insect predation. The Boucherie method is an environmentally friendly and highly effective method, and our treated bamboo will last, with appropriate care, for many decades.
For our new reception we needed a long desk where our staff can greet our guests. Brian created a golden desk of woven bamboo, a virtual altar to rainforest energy. Terry Newmark imagined the sunburst behind the desk – La Luna does enjoy its eternal ballet with the Sun, after all….
Once again we needed railings, as the reception overlooks quite a precipice and we want our guests to have a secure viewing station. Brian brought many of his “duendes” with him to watch over our guests. Children (of all ages) will delight in discovering them all, even the one that is flying through the reception.
The coffee and tea serving station, the observation desk, the gift shop: you’ll find Brian’s imagination at play throughout the new building. As you will in many of our guest rooms, where Brian’s lights, desks, and bedframes will enrich your stay.
Brian reminds us of one of Tolkien’s most admirable creatures, the tall and treelike Ents. Ents were the most ancient of all the creatures in Middle Earth, and their job was to protect the forest. Powerful and elegant, Ents have endured, speaking to and for trees, always in service to the beauty of Mother Nature. Dear friend Brian, we are grateful that you speak to and for bamboo, and continue to bring so much joy to the Luna Nueva Family. Pura Vida!
For more information about Brian, his life, and his work, we refer you to his personal reflections on life as a bamboo twister.
