5
6
1. Universe House, late 1970s; 2. Brenda Haddon, George Firlotte, Donny Gullison, Live Random Airborne Systems remake, 1975; 3. Donny Gullison, Old Sow piece, 1973; 4. George Firlotte, Pissing in the river series #1, 1972; 5. Brenda Haddon, Foreign Body piece, 1973; 6. Marcusian Dulse, collecting Action #3, 1972
The founding of the commune on Grand Manan (a fairly large and sparsely-populated island about 30 km from mainland Charlotte County in the Bay of Fundy) less than two years after the meeting with Robert Barry was, in effect, the first perceptible collective gesture posed by the group. Previous to that time (Fall 1969 - Spring 1971), their activities were mostly limited to beer and marijuana-infused discussions in the Gullison family basement, with occasional late-night forays into ephemeral interventions and imperceptible actions in the surrounding woods. Sometime during this intermediate period, self-designated leader Donny Gullison met one-time NSCAD student and Ohio native Laird Hamilton, purportedly at a large outdoor gathering and percussion jam near Moncton.13 Laird's presence was to be decisive in the founding of the commune, which, during the first summer in 1971 was concretized by the construction of Universe House on a plot of land thought to be owned by Brenda Haddon's cousin (though it later turned out to be crown property). Laird had previously been involved in the founding of a commune on Lasqueti Island, in British Columbia, and brought back with him the work ethic he had developed there growing marijuana and building temporary shelters. The group's central activities were effectively the growing and harvesting of marijuana in nearby wooded areas of the island, as well as the gathering of the dulse found plentifully along its shorelines—Grand Manan is still known for its abundant supply of the edible seaweed. Both crops were sold during periodic visits to the mainland, providing the money that was used to buy the collectivelyowned necessities and staples they weren't able to grow, hunt, or gather. What incited this group of individuals to move from the context of a damp basement to an art workers' commune based out of a spherical house? To quote Donald Gullison, "We (the 'Whistle Cove Group') were pretty influenced by Marcuse, Laird brought us a couple of his books in '71... we really saw the synthesis of dulse-collecting, heavy potsmoking and land art as being the ultimate manifestation of the non-repressive society; that is one (loosely quoting from Eros and Civilization) 'based on a fundamentally different experience of being, a fundamentally different relation between man and nature, and fundamentally different existential relations.'"14 The first manifestation of this "fundamentally different experience of being" was, arguably, the construction of the aforementioned "Universe House," the spherical building that would serve as the group's headquarters over the following years. Its form was inspired by roundhouses such as the Logan house in Laird's native Ohio, initially designed to stand up to the weather conditions in the Midwest wind corridor. The base structure was made from curved poplar tree-trunks shaped into a spherical form and 67