#Island thyme orcas island full#

Moving beyond the Loggie gallery and toward Leo’s rendition of an ancient, crumbling temple… The woodwork is excruciatingly detailed and perfect. Not only did Leo continue to build onto his house, he also did all the interior walls himself. Heading toward the next part of the house, which holds the largest collection of Helen Loggie etchings in the world…

Heading out of the main house onto the deck overlooking the sea…

#Island thyme orcas island full#

You might imagine that even one of his ideas would have taken a lifetime to complete, yet he has room upon room full of ideas made real because he apparently never told himself that they couldn’t be done. I am both honored and saddened.įeast your eyes on this man’s dreams that he fashioned into reality. Leo no longer gives home tours, as his beautifully arranged home gallery has been reconfigured for an art sale on August 25th and 26th, and no longer conveys the level of impeccability it always did in the past, so I happened to spontaneously ask for and receive the last guided walk-through ever. If only National Geographic or the Smithsonian could get over here to document it all before it’s gone – it is about to vanish silently into the past.

But I know this is never the fate he intended for his incredibly-built home and his extensive art collection. Between death, family illness, and pitiful lawsuits, Leo has experienced heavy loss in almost every imaginable way – very personal, emotional situations whose details I will leave for him to divulge in more private settings. I love when people live out their dreams, and this was an example of long, hard, intellectual, and physical work to do just that.Įyes welling up, Leo explained the many reasons he is having to move on. I called him out of the blue and asked if I could come and document this world he made, which will no longer exist in several months. I knew that was not part of his long-term plan when I met him on that first tour. I was dumbfounded, not just by the amount of art perfectly and precisely hung in that house, but also by the tediously complex projects that Leo himself carried out in order to make his own imaginative dreams come true inside and outside of those walls.Ī few weeks ago, I saw a flyer that said he’d be selling off everything at the end of this month in order to eventually move away from Orcas Island. It’s been four years since my first tour. It wasn’t until we heard you could book a two-hour art tour with the owner that we thought, “Ohhhh, okay.” He started out with a little 24′ x 24′ cabin and built on it over the years until it became the stunningly unique treasure that it is today, hanging on a precipice above the ocean and filled with thousands of masterpieces by thousands of artists.ĭecorated on its exterior in various styles and mediums, we didn’t know what the house was all about the first few times we drove past it when we moved here.

Now it is all coming to an uncomfortably abrupt end. For over 50 years, Leo Lambiel has been collecting mostly local art – some of it very expensive art – and displaying it in his home.