Noguchi connected Blunk with a friend of his who also lived in Inverness – the British Surrealist painter Gordon Onslow Ford, a member of the Dynaton group that also included Lee Mullican and Wolfgang Paalen. Ford shared with Blunk an interest in Eastern philosophy; through him, Blunk met the painter Richard Bowman, who lived nearby. The painting by Bowman in this exhibition belonged to Blunk, acquired after the friends traded artworks.

Ford offered Blunk an acre of his property on which Blunk began to build himself a home, mainly using salvaged redwood and pine. Blunk built himself a kiln, too, but from the mid-1960s on, his primary material was wood. He made functional objects, such as benches and tables, but also autonomous sculptures and totems, all of which conformed to his unique, idiosyncratic aesthetic. Blunk’s ethical commitment to place and to renewal led him to use almost exclusively salvaged timber; the forms of his wooden objects often emerged from the knots and burls of these found parts of fallen trees or sections rejected by other woodworkers. Rather than imposing a pre-determined design onto his material, he allowed it to express its own character through his hand.