Feb. 6, 2025

Remember making mud pies as a kid? Last fall, Toni Thorn of Frisco spent four weeks in West Texas learning to make buildings out of mud.

Thorn learned the craft while serving as student volunteer at the School of Constructive Arts in Alpine, outside Big Bend National Park.

What inspired her? 

“My husband and I had traveled to West Texas. I fell in love with the desert. I had been collecting info on earth building for a while and discovered the school shortly after they launched in 2021.”

Toni Thorn of Frisco attended a four-week residency at the School of Constructive Arts to learn hands-on techniques for constructing earth-friendly buildings. Courtesy of Toni Thorn.

Thorn grew up in Philadelphia but her husband is from East Texas and had spent time in West Texas as a child.

Today, the couple have five kids, including a 21-year-old, 14-year-old twins and an 11 and 5-year-old. Their 14-year-old son is on the autism spectrum. The family settled in the suburbs where Thorn has been a stay-at-home mom, focused on family and gardening. 

“I am in tune with nature, but had no experience in building,” she says.

Thorn said she had two reasons to pursue the residency — first, she and her husband wanted to build an earth home.

“Our priorities are for a building that is sustainable — cost and maintenance — as well as toxin free and eco-conscious, providing natural comfort in living for our family and long term for our son,” she said. “We don’t plan to build our primary residence in Big Bend but do plan to continue to visit and stay involved in their efforts with earthen materials.”

The second reason she took the course was to gain enough knowledge to eventually start a self-directed learning center in DFW.

“There are many restrictions in the zoning and land laws in DFW that can make building anything non-traditional challenging.”

GROUP BONDING

Participants from all backgrounds work on group projects together. Courtesy of School of Construction Arts.

The residency included nine participants with diverse backgrounds, Thorn said.

“They came from all over. One was an artist who was learning to work with different media. Another resident was in construction and wanted to learn earth building. Also part of the group was an urban farmer, who wanted to upgrade the farm she works on in the Northeast. There was also a musician. Everyone came from different backgrounds and had different reason to want to learn. It was less than 48 hours before we all came together.”

During the residency, the participants did everything as a group. They prepared and ate all meals together, some cooked, some cleaned. A typical day was broken into classroom learning during the first half, and the second half working on existing projects. Most of the participants lived in tents. Two of them, including Thorn, outfitted their SUVs so they could sleep in them.

“We all learned about bringing this ancient building form to fruition,” Thorn said. 

While there, the group worked to complete a library and classroom built from compressed earth blocks, a modern earthen material similar to traditional adobe brick. The compressed earth blocks are pressed in a machine from a dampened mixture of sand and clay soil. They can be stabilized with lime to make them resistant to water and are cured on pallets until ready for use. The walls had been put in the previous session, and the student volunteers worked on plastering and preparing the building to receive a masonry vaulted roof, or “boveda.” 

Residency students attend classes as well as share meals and chores together. Courtesy of School of Construction Arts.

At the end of the residency, the group did a three-day project in Marathon, a small West Texas town located in a food desert. The town with a population of less than 400 has one grocery store — the French Company Grocer. The store not only provides fresh food but is a central location for music and community gatherings. 

Thorn’s husband was able to join her for this part, while his mother stayed with their kids. While in Marathon, the residents taught the French Company Grocer team, as well as other members of the Marathon community, the techniques of earth block construction in order to build a new home for their much-loved and needed grocery store.

FOUNDERS

Natural materials, including soil and sand, are compressed to make earth blocks. Photo courtesy of the School of Constructive Arts.

The School of Constructive Arts is a field school that teaches regenerative design and building. It is the brainchild of architect, builder and teacher Bob Estrin. He wanted to integrate modern sustainable building science with a more holistic ancient approach he learned during his thesis research and while traveling especially in North Africa.

The school’s origin begins with Don Bryant, a Texas rancher, who had been living, farming and building on his 20-acre property in Big Bend since the 1970s. He met Estrin and several of his like-minded friends in 2018. Together they developed a plan to turn Bryant’s homestead into a school that embodied the rancher’s desire to do innovative building that was in harmony with the land.

Bryant died in 2019, which led the group to officially form the nonprofit School of Constructive Arts in 2020. Following the first student program in the spring of 2021, the school took a break to invest in infrastructure and cleanup and restarted in the spring of 2023.

FOR-PROFIT ARM

Bryant’s initial land donation, followed by generous contributions from Dennis and Roxann Reeser, as well as grants from the Permian Basin Area Foundation, allowed the school to get established with grass roots community support. In order to continue funding research and education, which is offered completely free to student volunteers, the organization recently started a for-profit wing: Constructive Arts PBC (public benefit corporation). 

The PBC provides specialized services including design consultation, training and direct assistance to people who want to utilize regenerative design and earthen construction on their projects. Funds from the PBC go to support the school’s ongoing research and education.

RESIDENCIES

Participants reconnect with nature while working with all natural construction materials. Courtesy of School of Construction Arts.

The school is run by Estrin, Heather Christensen and Coakee William Wildcat. A native Texan, Christensen studied hydrogeology and aqueous geochemistry at UT, and later specialized in water law and policy in grad school. Prior to joining the School of Constructive Arts, she was a regenerative agriculture and soil science consultant. Coakee William Wildcat is the founder and executive director of Mother Tree Food and Forest and director of EcoRestoration Alliance. He combines modern science and dry lands restoration approaches with ancestral approaches to land management and agroecology. His focus is to provide a cohesive understanding of humanity’s relationship with the earth, fostering responsible stewardship.

The school offers two 3-4 week residencies a year, says Christensen. 

“But we are always innovating. This spring we are breaking the four-week residency into two roughly two-week sessions with a break in between.” 

In addition to these long-form student programs, she says, “we offer a range of educational workshops ranging from one-day to a week in length.”

Student volunteers do not pay for the education, room or board, says Christensen. However, she says there is an element of service in that each generation of students is building facilities as a gift to the next generation of students while enjoying the facilities gifted by past students. 

“Student labor cannot cover the costs of the education but we like to think of it in terms of reciprocity and gift economy,” Christensen says.

As for Thorn, she says she is in her comfort zone. Her husband and kids are all supportive. “Everything has aligned.”

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