Patty & Tom
Tom and Patty met in 1982, the year after she purchased the Fish Creek Road property. There was a cozy ranch house, a spring-fed quarry pond surrounded by glacial bedrock, and acres and acres of rubble from what had been one of the many working bluestone quarries in the area.
Year by year, project by project, they transformed the site into a beautiful and diverse landscape featuring Tom's bluestone and crystal-glass sculptures and a unique five-story spiral house — all grounded in the patterns of nature and sacred geometry. Beyond the individual works Tom created — including winding stone walls that weave the landscape together with his art and the Spiral House — Tom and Patty restored a once-ravaged quarry to unity with the surrounding Catskill mountains.
Read on to see how their individual lives spiraled together to create what is now Spiral House Park.
Patty Livingston
FOUNDER & CHAIR, BOARD OF DIRECTORS, SPIRAL HOUSE PARK
Born and raised in Connecticut, Patty comes from a family deeply committed to environmental stewardship. For many years, she has served on the board of her family’s environmental philanthropy, with a particular focus on fostering meaningful, lasting connections between children and the living web of nature.
She describes her young adulthood as having bounced around like a tumbleweed — in life direction and geography. While taking pre-engineering courses at Columbia University, she began thinking about a weekend house in Upstate New York, where she had unexpectedly connected with her father’s roots after his death some years earlier. It was spring, 1981. She wanted water and some land and a place to pitch a tent. Fish Creek Road was the first property she looked at.
The following summer she met the artist Tom Gottsleben and soon they were spending weekends together upstate. By the mid 1990s, living full-time on the property, Patty asked Tom to design a guest house, imagining a cozy Woodstock cottage. After resisting for quite a while. Tom showed her a model of a spiral house. Her open-mindedness to new ideas and appreciation of his enthusiasm were greater than her resistance to some of the details. Throughout the process, Patty served as both muse and reality check — helping to ensure that Tom’s visionary design would also be a comfortable place to live and welcoming to guests.
Following Tom’s passing in 2019, Patty set out to transform the property into a park dedicated to the arts and environmental awareness. In the spring of 2025, she transferred ownership to the newly created nonprofit Spiral House Park and that summer the park began hosting public events.
Patty once described her role at the Spiral House as providing a space where others could experience peace, joy, and a sense of community, and where they could feel secure enough to express their creativity. Through Spiral House Park, she extends that possibility to visitors of all ages and backgrounds. She hopes that they will find inspiration in Tom’s artistic and architectural imagination, in the harmony and beauty inherent in nature’s patterns, and in the landscape that inspired them both.
Tom Gottsleben (1950 – 2019)
ARTIST
From an early age Tom had a passion for art — drawing, painting, and visiting museums in the many cities his military family called home. Living in Japan during his last years in high school, he became interested in Eastern Philosophy and found a context for his natural inclination toward metaphysical questions. At age 21, he followed his primary teacher, the then 13-year-old Prem Rawat, to India and gave up painting to live and work in that monastic community in India and the United States for five years.
Drawn to practice in the secular world and eager to embrace art again, Tom moved back to California and resumed painting while working for an international management firm, consulting for businesses in a wide range of industries. He was challenged by the question: how could he express in art the transcendent ideas and experiences that had been the center of life with his teacher?
During a business trip to New York in 1982, Tom met Patty and they quickly became a couple. He set up an art studio in the ranch house garage and continued to paint the abstract canvases that he favored. In 1988, after the sudden loss of their beloved dog Rafferty, Patty suggested that Tom make a stone bench as a memorial. Through that experience he began his dialog with the stone, as material and as part of the terrain. He collected stones, he composed them into small sculptures, and he began building stone walls along the far side of the quarry pond. He and Patty set up a company for his stone work and named it Rafferty Rocks.
Around this time, an acquaintance assumed from one of Tom’s paintings that Tom was interested in sacred geometry, about which Tom in fact knew nothing. Curious, he began studying this ancient wisdom tradition, a way of understanding the patterns of life, the ways in which new forms unfold from existing forms, and how unity is maintained throughout the growth process.
Looking for a way to bring movement into his sculpture, Tom’s attention kept landing on the spiral, a ubiquitous form of growth throughout the natural world and one rich with symbolism. Tom created his first spiral sculpture in 1990, and by the end of the decade he was three years into the process of building the Spiral House.
After a trip to India with Patty the year that Rafferty died, Tom saw their land on Fish Creek as what Buddhists call the Immoveable Spot, the place where one stands to realize truth. That single focus made the entire property Tom’s canvas, creating the extraordinary landscape that you see today.
Tom’s art is in private collections and was the subject of solo exhibitions at the Neuberger Museum of Art (Purchase, NY), Art Omi International (Ghent, NY), and The Museum at Bethel Woods (Bethel, NY); and group shows at the annual Contemporary Sculpture at Chesterwood (Stockbridge, MA), and the New York Botanical Garden (Bronx, NY). His work is represented by the Elena Zang Gallery, Bearsville, New York.
The property has been recognized by Historic Artists Homes & Studios as an affiliate member.
The Crew
So many people contributed their artistry, expertise, skill, hard work, and friendship to the creation of the Spiral House, Tom's sculpture, the entire landscape, and the magic that has now become Spiral House Park. A deep bow of gratitude to each and every one.
Original “Spiral Construction” Crew 1997 – 2002
Lester Bach (lead mason)
Danny Bach (mason)
Eduardo Corradetti (stone cutter, mason’s helper)
Jerry Free (sheet rocker, plasterer)
Oreste Gatta (stone cutter, mason’s helper)
John Kilb (builder)
Jim LaShomb (wood stainer)
Dan Levey (stainless steel pro)
John Malloy (sheet rocker, plasterer)
Steve Morris (fabricator of exterior steel railings)
Patrick Murphy (builder)
Rudy Numssen (builder’s helper)
Jason Martinez (stone shaper)
Justin Martinez (stone cutting support, tile assistant)
Mike North & Bill Scribner, North Engineering and Design Associates (engineering)
Ron Palicia (tiler)
Charlie Planz (stone cutter, mason’s helper)
Gerry Poole (builder’s helper, glass installer)
Steve Roberto (plumbing, heating, air conditioning)
Charlie Rothe, Rothe (welding, steel fabrication)
Kenny St. John (copper roofer)
Joe Santamaria (stone cutter, mason’s helper)
Maria Santamaria (bookkeeper, office manager)
Herb Silander (lead builder, design assistance)
Tom Smith (electrician)
Chris Stralka (mason, painter)
Frank Torok (excavator)
Frank Torok Jr. (excavator)
Rudy Trischitta (stone cutter, mason’s helper, mortar mixer)
Kevin Vines (stone cutter, polisher, mason’s helper, painter)
The Spiral House, Rafferty Rocks, & Rafferty Rocks Press Crew 2002 – 2025
Valerie Augustine (sous chef, housekeeper)
Anjali Bermain (garden crew, yoga instructor)
Michael Brako (sculpture crew)
Rafael Cano (garden crew)
Greg Drake (sculpture crew)
Sara Gast (garden crew)
Oreste Gatta (senior sculpture crew)
Harlan Gordon (internet & technology)
Diane Haggedorn (chef)
Michael Haight (digital artist)
Leticia Lacativa (indoor maintenance)
Stacey Mathes (housekeeper)
Rudy Numssen (senior sculpture crew)
Paul Osterle (maintenance crew)
Jane Polcovar (garden crew)
Lara Polcovar (garden crew)
Jack Rauscher (sculpture crew)
Palemon Francisco Robles (garden crew)
Gary Rossi (sculpture crew)
Carie Salberg (garden crew, yoga instructor)
Joe Santamaria (logistics, senior sculpture crew)
Maria Santamaria (book keeper, office manager)
Ronnie Shushan (writer, editor, graphic designer)
Andrea Barrist Stern (head gardener, photographer, editor)
Chris Stralka (property manager, senior sculpture crew)
Kevin Vines (sculpture studio manager)
Land Acknowledgement
Spiral House Park respectfully acknowledges that we are situated on the unceded ancestral territory of the Esopus people, a band of the Munsee-speaking Lenape. We also recognize the historic presence and stewardship of the Haudenosaunee — the People of the Long House — an alliance of six sovereign Nations. The Mohican (Mahican) people likewise inhabited this broader region.
We acknowledge that many descendants of these Nations were forcibly displaced and now reside far from their ancestral homelands, yet continue to sustain their cultural traditions, community relationships, and identity.
We further recognize the profound and lasting impacts of colonization, including dispossession, forced removal, and cultural disruption. While these harms cannot be undone, we honor the enduring connection of these peoples to this land and affirm our responsibility to acknowledge their histories with accuracy, respect, and integrity.
Spiral House Park expresses gratitude for the original stewards of this region and remains committed to remembering and honoring their ongoing presence and contributions.
