Inside a Washington state architect's visionary homestead

In Sedro-Woolley, an eccentric architect has garnered attention nationally over years of work. SunRay Kelley has been featured by the New York Times, the DIY Network’s "Building Off the Grid," the Seattle Times and HGTV’s "Home Strange Home."

Still, Kelley and his partner, Bonnie, are able to live relatively undisturbed inside a visionary homestead.

“I’m not into boring. Not my thing,” Kelley said, laughing.

He swept bathtub water onto a hot stove, making it burp steam. The tub, next to a fire, is in the home where he’s staying. He rotates through a web of houses he has constructed.

His bathtub is near windows fogged by warmth, in a greenhouse space with flowers, green plants and a holiday tree luminous with ornaments. Jade, rimmed by white buds, thrives there in winters.

It’s winter now, and we’re in one of Kelley’s 20-some creative structures on his family’s old homestead in Sedro-Woolley.

Kelley was born on the property. When he was a child, his parents raised cattle, pigs and chickens for meat.

“We had a farm. We didn't have electricity in the first 10 years of my life. ... My dad had cows and we milked the cows and the beef cattle and they had pigs and they had chickens. And he ate pretty much three meals a day, always meat cooked in bacon grease, and loved the fat. ... He kept going, ‘You don't eat meat. How is this, you're, you're here?'” Kelley said. “So, there was somewhat a feeling of isolation, maybe, because they're telling me, they're programming me, that there's something wrong with me not eating meat.”

A nearby road is still named after his grandparents, the Janickis, who came from Poland.

Kelley says they were the first people to live on the land.

“Before my grandparents moved onto this mountain, no one had ever lived on this mountain,” Kelley said. “The Native Americans who had been here ... they all lived down on the water, with the canoes and the boats. But they would come to this mountain … to find their song. And then, in their tradition, once you found your song, you need not ask another blessing, because all things come to you."

Kelley said his architecture serves to continue this mission.

"My work, a little bit now, is to also help people find their song, their purpose, their gift, whatever it is … helping them really be comfortable embracing that opportunity."

Visitors are offered to stay in some of the properties listed in app Airbnb.

SunRay Kelley’s own name is a song.

"My parents named me Raymond. They would always introduce me, 'This is our son, Ray.' Whenever they would introduce me to people, 'This is our son, Ray.' From a very early age, I had this 'son, Ray; son, Ray; son, Ray,’” Kelley said.

Kelley’s brother stays in the house where they lived as children. It’s yellow and plain.

Between the childhood home and magical properties Kelley designed are twisting, knotty-branched orchards with apple trees.

“I love apples,” Kelley said. “I'm all about apple foods. Apple everything."

He also likes cooking with potatoes. On the property grow apples, potatoes, plums, cabbage, carrots and nut trees.

We walked and observed the roof of one of his stump houses. Water feeds the grass-headed, wood huts; they balance over ponds.

Kelley travels barefoot. He bounced up and down on a diving board over a pond, feeding fish. His hands and feet are brown with dirt. “I’m a barefootist,” he said, grinning.

The home he’s in now has radiant floor heating, which is kind to cold feet. In a large wooden dome in the middle of the house, he led us through a diamond-shaped door and struck a steel drum-like musical instrument constructed of old kerosene tank parts.

He played each musical note carefully, with gravity.

"My architecture really is about raising human consciousness,” Kelley said. “I don't really call them buildings anymore. They're energy-generating machines that are like amplifiers."

Kelley was a student of football and sculpture at Western before he built homes. He attended Western on a football scholarship.

"I was very energetic,” Kelley said. “I kind of used athletics as a way to release a lot of energy. I had a lot of energy that was bound up because I had, what do you call it, post-traumatic stress disorder from school -- being told to sit down, shut up and be quiet."

Details in his architecture show Kelley’s work as a sculptural artist.

The mold of a woman’s body swells from a hearth.

The nipples are blackened with ash. The pubic bone rounds out where the fire is built. In a curving arch that marks where the window ends and ceiling begins are pink folds that look like human tissue -- upsetting borders.

"Nature loves texture. Nature's full of texture,” Kelley said, sitting before the coarse walls of the living room. They are cob walls, made of horse manure, water, clay, sand.

“My goal is to restore the Garden of Eden,” he said.

I ask if this means he thinks life in its original state was perfect.

“I think it was magnificent,” he said.

Dogs and cats weave through stacks of wood, grounded apples. There are piles of building tools and children’s toys.

"If you ask where I come from, I have to start talking with / broken objects,” Pablo Neruda wrote.

Kelley’s space functions with Neruda’s broken objects by recognizing all objects as inherently broken.

Kelley welcomes nature inside; his architecture seeks to resolve fracture.

Cox Media Group