Beginnings

I began my woodworking career with making drums for my wife who wanted some specially designed community drums for the workshops she taught.  I was delighted to discover working wood could be just as wonderful as making sculpture. Since I spent most of my art career as a sculptor, I had to re-educate my eye and mind to make useful objects. My early years in college as an engineering student contributed a practical, structural element to my art, but function alone was never enough to satisfy me. It is a real challenge to make sure the piece is pleasing both as a useful and sculptural object.

 

FUNCTIONAL ART

For me, a table needs lines and surfaces that invite the eye and hand to explore and discover its secrets. It must, of course, have a level, useful surface, and be structurally stable so as not to wobble when bumped. At the same time, in order to be sculpturally viable, it must have more than just sturdiness and a flat top. I love the organic, living relationships in a successful piece, and shape most of the parts in my furniture with a reverence for curves. This satisfies not only the design of a piece, but expresses a feeling and inspires the eye of the beholder. I take the time to work the wood to release it from its default rectangular shape. I often make several sample legs or rails to test new shapes, holding them up to the piece and waiting for the right feeling to reveal itself.

My sculptor’s eye is largely free from judgment, and looks only for harmony of shape, texture and color.  I will experiment for hours, sometimes days, with the configuration of a table corner or box lid before the best one appears: and when it does, it’s a revelation to me. I find the same child-like excitement working wood that I had welding steel or throwing a clay vase on the potter’s wheel, even though the process is quite different.. The enjoyment of bringing form and function together is my goal when I work. I want each piece function well, yet escape the confinement of its function and flow effortlessly.

 

Allowing the Wood to Speak

When I’m ready to start a new project, a special piece of lumber that I’ve tucked away in a corner of my shop may catch my eye as I’m sorting through the boards.  It’s like suddenly spotting an old friend. Each board sings its own song, its grain and color demanding a particular shape.  The figure and color will often suggest its ultimate destination in a table or box. On some projects, I’ll bring out all the planks that I could potentially use, looking them over for inspiration. Rough sawn lumber has a surface that obscures the grain detail of the wood, so I run some of them through the planer to reveal that grain. The plan for a furniture piece may already be complete, and I’m only choosing the right boards.  But more often, the plan develops as I handle the wood.  I don’t know how to be the kind of woodworker who turns out a line of work that’s completely consistent.  It would be a lot easier, and less expensive to work that way, because all the design decisions would have been worked out in advance.  But the artist in me is compelled to begin each project with expression as the main motivation. This results in truly one-of-a-kind work, and moves at a slower pace than the operation of a production shop.

 

Trees

Trees have always had a special place in my heart.  I can remember walking in the woods as a young man and coming across a seedling cedar that compelled me to kneel on the ground and caress it’s needles.  The love I felt for that tiny plant was intense and child-like.  We live in the Shawnee National Forest in Southern Illinois, where I can walk for a mile or more without seeing another house or road.  The trees here are magnificent hardwoods, and I’m recognizing many of them as friends.  Their longevity is somehow comforting to me, and I make every effort to use only those whose life is finished.  The wood from these trees is as precious to me as any exotic species, and when I plane a wispy shaving from a plank with one of my grandfather’s handmade planes, there is a circle of completion I enjoy immensely.

 

The discipline of cutting traditional mortise and tenon joinery and polishing a surface that takes advantage of the wonders of wood grain has revitalized my art. These time-honored materials and techniques have allowed me to embrace new elements of my vision.  This art pleases me intensely. It has opened avenues of expression, and stretched my imagination in a way that has brought new peace and healing energy into my life.