It sounds like a swarm of bees. It looks like a kid’s toy. It flies like a tipsy seagull. And it draws Bill Clark out of his office and into his almond grove.
What’s all that buzzing?
Clark, the 80-something collector and benefactor whose prodigious, eclectic taste in Japanese art will debut this weekend at the MIA, is a curious man. As in, he’s curious about everything. Like, what’s it like to fly a drone?
When sent to do some audio reporting there, I anticipated a straightforward trip. All work, no play.
But as soon as MIA videographer/drone operator Ryan Lee and I turn up at the Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture, in Hanford, California, I know this is an adventure. About an hour and a half south of Fresno, the Clark Center and home is in an agricultural area where almonds, pistachios, and cattle grow plump, the air is nosebleed dry, the sun scorching.
Ryan Lee and Andreas Marks eat a peach under the roasting California sun.
On the Clark property are peach trees, two fig trees heaped with ripe drupes, even a pomegranate tree. “Help yourself,” Clark offers. Andreas Marks, formerly the Clark Center director who now heads the MIA’s Department of Japanese and Korean Art, leads us to his favorite peach tree. Within minutes, our chins are slick with juice.
Clark indulges us in hours of interviews. We move on to his passion for collecting; it’s a fun piece you can hear on Verso.
Bill Clark above his bullfrog pond.
When a beekeeper shows up, pickup heavy with honey jars, Clark shares the riches all around. The sun soon turns fierce, so we seek a breeze on the Clark home’s patio, surrounded by a lush Japanese garden and a pond dotted with lily pads.
Every few minutes, bullfrogs belch their lusty song, and a train wails off in the distance. Clark takes care to keep me in the shade of a gnarled oak. A tree he grew up with and built his home around in the days before drones, when a peach was dessert.