BUILDING
Domes
IN JAMAICA

In a December 1971 letter, Willard wrote, "I live in Jamaica now... Lois is moving down in January... It is beautiful...and right on the pounding sea. I'm working very hard day after day and have never been anywhere near as happy as I am now."

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Willard's second marriage had dissolved and in 1966 his wife took their daughter to the west coast to live. Three years later, after 13 years living in the gritty Lower East Side, he lost his large Bowery studio and all his equipment when members of the local Mafia took over his expansive, former synagogue space. In late 1970, he left the Bowery altogether, and moved "across the bridge" with his new girlfriend, Lois Friedel, to her small, Brooklyn Heights apartment. They were happy together there, but it had no space for an art studio.

He had been in a transcendental meditation group for a couple years and in psychotherapy for many years, seeking release from the fears and insecurities that seemed to hold him back, seeking to know his inner self, as a person and as an artist.

In 1971, Willard and Lois had a transformational experience while on a vacation in Jamaica, and they were inspired to immerse themselves in nature there, in what he called "our benevolent jungle." After 25 years living as a struggling artist in urban New York, Willard detached from city life and moved full time to Jamaica, where he built a series of geodesic domes.

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They spent about four years living near Robin's Bay on Jamaica's undeveloped north coast, next to a "hippie" campground called Strawberry Fields. He occupied a beautiful piece of land he named Lórien, after the fairest realm of the Elves in Middle-earth, from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings novels. When the local Jamaicans had a hard time pronouncing his name, they began calling him Willow, which stuck for the remainder of his life.

After years spent building his own living and working spaces in New York lofts, Willard had become fascinated by the movement around Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes, and as an opportunity to create self-built, low-cost housing in Jamaica, Willard tried start a business building geodesic domes, first to sell as vacation homes for his New York friends on his piece of the jungle, and later for a possible orphanage and a school.

Lois followed him to Jamaica a few months later, in early 1972, and taught in a small school. In an October 1973 letter he wrote, "We are married now... my life now is all joy of doing." They had several dear friends who visited from New York, and met many new, interesting people, both local Jamaicans and the campers traveling through.

"I hardly know myself anymore, my life is so different. For instance, I just came in from replanting some avocado trees and a rose-apple tree next to the stream; I watered the garden earlier and at 6:30 this morning I drove Lois out to Robin's Bay where she caught a mini-bus to Highgate where she teaches in the "all ages school." October 1, 1973

Willard built several large geodesic domes, experimenting with a variety of materials, creating the domes as if they were oversized sculptures. He used aluminum tubing for the structures, the first one was 26-feet high, and served as their living room, kitchen and bedroom, covered with white vinyl-coated nylon for the surface. When he built a second dome as a bedroom, they changed the first dome surface to palm branch thatching for a more natural look. The 16-foot bedroom dome was covered in clear vinyl "so we can watch the stars at night..."

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For his business he created a "Willow Dome" prefab design. He developed steel molds and cast ferro-cement triangles made to be bolted onto the aluminum tube structures. He built a prototype as a 16-foot dome with A-frame wings, first intended as their "cottage" guest house. This became the proof of concept for building the ferro-cement school dome. He later wrote, "When finished, we will move into it and make our old big dome into a factory for prefabricating the two types of cement module domes I have designed so far."

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Although they enjoyed living in their jungle domes and gardens, he was plagued by local politics, and had difficulties obtaining work permits and building permits from the government, preventing him from fully realizing his visionary ideas. He eventually finished up his time there by making one large dome school building with his pre-cast, ferro-cement triangles, assisted by the Peace Corps and funded by USAID and private investors. He finally had to leave the island when things continued to turn more dangerous for Americans, and the USAID funding was cut off due to politics.

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Lois went back to New York City first, in the fall of 1974, where she had a new job as Educational Director of the Brooklyn branch of United Cerebral Palsy Foundation. She remained in the field of educating children with special needs for the next forty years, pioneering in the field of early intervention for children with autism with her business partner, Kathleen Kuhlman–first opening an agency and then their own school.

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Willard returned to Brooklyn full time a year after Lois, at the end of 1975, after attempting to complete the school dome. It was here his life dramatically changed again.

Upon his return to New York after living in Jamaica for four years, Willard got a job as the Night Pier Master at the South Street Seaport in Manhattan during the 1976 US Bicentennial celebrations. With access to the Tall Ships docked there for Operation Sail and the Bicentennial, he rediscovered his love of sailing ships and started developing his dynamic, signature watercolor style, working in a small studio in their Brooklyn Heights apartment. He then discovered the action of the 12 Meter racing yachts in Newport, RI and found his lifelong muse. This was the beginning of his career as a marine artist. He began to get gallery recognition, and in 1978, became a charter member of The American Society of Marine Artists.

Thirty years later, Willard built his last dream studio, on their mountain property in the Catskills, two and a half hours' drive from the Brooklyn Heights apartment. It was a 30-foot-high, pre-fab, modern geodesic dome kit, assembled onto a prepared wooden platform by a team of friends and family, over a weekend.

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