May 28, 2007 — Conclusion of my musings on Art
and Craft

My good friend and former apprentice, Mark Macek recently invited me to come to the University of Texas School of Architecture, where he teaches woodworking classes, and critique some of his student’s end of semester furniture projects.  Although Mark was educated as an architect he has maintained a woodworking studio in east Austin for the past twelve years where he has been creating his own distinctive interpretations of modernist furniture.

It was obvious that some of his students had labored hard over their designs and Mark had instructed them well in choosing appropriate joinery.  Every one of the dozen or so pieces was crisply geometric with edges so hard one could cut a finger on them.  There was no hint of anything arts & crafts, or deco, and certainly nothing traditional.  The modernist aesthetic reigned unanimously supreme, and I attribute this conformity not to Mark’s influence but to the prevailing spirit that continues to dominate architecture schools and the practice of architecture itself.

I don’t mean to sound too authoritative on this matter since I have no intimate knowledge of architecture, but as someone who is always looking for new sources of inspiration I thought I would use this recent occasion as an opportunity to gain a better understanding of what is going on in this noble discipline.  In my researches I discovered the Architecture Week website which is one of the most informative and absorbing I have ever come across.  It contains hundreds of articles and photographs related to contemporary architecture and practicing architects throughout the world.  The numerous interviews and reviews I read seemed to confirm that most all of the big name architects still define themselves as modernists of one variety or another.

I am told that modernism, as a philosophy of progress leading to a utopian George Jetson Age, is dead.  The great conflicts and atrocities of the twentieth century did it in, but as an approach to design and architecture it continues to evolve and thrive.  In the realm of large commercial and public buildings, modernism universally appears to be about the only game in town (or at least in the big city) these days.  Some of these structures are amazing examples of design, engineering, and technology.  My untrained eye is especially drawn to those with facades that curve or undulate, but for the most part modernist buildings, small and large, look to me like endless variations and rearrangements of the rectangle.

Perhaps the materials used in creating these titanic structures — glass, steel, concrete, lend themselves best to a modernist approach.  Technological advances in glass now allow for buildings that are close to transparent, and on a smaller scale new homes are being built with exterior walls of glass.  Japanese especially seem to like these.  I read about an Australian architect who built a glass house for himself and his wife, and they decided not to install any drapes or shades.  The wife says she undresses in the "cupboard" which I guess is Australian for a closet.  They both seemed to be incensed when neighbors made humorous and sarcastic comments about their literally transparent life style.  Great architects, like all great artists, are never understood by the masses.

It’s interesting that so many of the professional people working in modern glass and steel buildings rush home at day’s end to their unabashedly traditional homes and apartments.  I have been staggered by the expensive houses and developments that have been erected in my own area in the past twenty years, and eighty percent of them reflect a traditional, regional, or classical aesthetic of some kind.  A BBC journalist recently reported on what may be the wealthiest neighborhood in the world.

It’s a secret wooded suburb outside of Moscow where Russian billionaires retire in the evenings to continue counting all their rubles after work hours.  Some of the opulent, golden structures on these well-guarded streets are described as Tudor, Victorian, Bavarian castle, and Deco, but there is no mention of Modern.  Why is it that wealthy, educated people who can have whatever they want choose personal environments that are stuck in the past?  For many, rich or otherwise, the modern holds little visual or emotional appeal.

What is the future of design?  Shall we simply carry on with this dichotomy between rearrangements of the rectangle vs. rearrangements of the past?  Does anyone outside of the design world really care?  After listening to the evening news it doesn’t seem like a very important question.  The philosopher Hegel taught that historical conflicts and contradictions, represented as the protagonist vs. antagonist, eventually resolve themselves in something new, a synthesis.  Is a synthesis possible between the traditional and the modern, perhaps something deeper and more sustained than the short-lived post-modern movement?  I’ve heard that the post-modern as a philosophy is very much alive and in vogue, but as a design practice it’s pretty dead.  I am very grateful to the intellectuals who are able to keep these matters straight for the rest of us.

Actually, I believe craftsmen and craftswomen working in a variety of mediums over the past twenty or more years have done wonderful and innovative work that does bridge the divide.  They have combined a desire to do new and original work with a deep respect for knowledge that has been passed on, often from the distant past.  For many craftsmen it is all about pulling the past into the present and making it new.  While recently looking at Fine Woodworking Design Book Seven, published eleven years ago, I was inspired, not only by awesome craftsmanship, but also by the mature synthesis of design expressed in so many of the objects collected there.  Many of these things could be at home in surroundings classical or modern.

To see someone who is beautifully reinterpreting classical design, take a look at Paul Schurch’s incredible marquetry furniture.

Fox Brothers studio takes a modern approach to design. Their lovely and innovative furniture would look great in many different environments.

With the isolation and autonomy among disciplines, however, it is hard to know if anyone else is looking at what goes on in the craft world.  Architects usually see themselves at the top of the design pecking order, and I doubt that they are being influenced by any of this other work.  When collaborating with craftsmen, they tend to want total control over the design process.  I think the last time I was solicited by an architect he wanted a conference table that was to be assembled with lag screws.  Our conversation was short, but I do remember walking him to his car.  Needless to say, this project did not come to fruition, at least in my workshop.

There are also those out there who are calling for something completely new and different, in which case I would like to recommend blobism, an original and unifying approach to design inspired by protozoan life-forms.  As soon as I can figure out how to use this microscope and some big sculptor’s gouges, I’m going for it.  In the mean time content yourself with checking out two architects who are the current darlings of the design world.  Read about Zaha Hadid and Ron Arad in The Future Of Design.

Zaha Hadid’s Aqua Table, a wonderful example of blobism, has a polyurethane base and a silicone gel top.  The top is not flat, but what do you want for $23,000, certainly not some old-fashioned dinosaur of a table made of wood?

April 27, 2007 — Continued musings on Art and Craft

I was in Houston last month (200 miles from where I live) delivering a dining table to a wonderful client who had the collected work of numerous craftsmen and artisans in her home.  We had done most of our communication via email and telephone, and the morning of my arrival was the first time I had actually seen the room the table was to go in. It is often easy to imbue whatever I am working on in the shop with an inordinate degree of importance forgetting it will ultimately be a furnishing among other furnishings and objects in a space.

This table itself was a bit unusual in that its "pedestal" was made from the roots and stump of a long dead live oak tree that I had discovered on a neighbor’s ranch.  I can’t say I have ever before had the desire to pursue the stump genre, but my client’s coaxing and the on-going need for gainful employment brought me to it.  Anyway, the new owner and I were both happy with the end result, and when the table had finally found its place, it was delightful to see it in a setting that contained the creative works of other makers.  I even left with the private satisfaction of believing my little piece not only held its own but even shone in this environment.  I may not be great, but I am vain.

Since it was not far away, my client suggested that I stop by the Houston Center For Contemporary Craft on my way out of the city, and so I did.  The center contains an exhibition hall, gift shop, and small studio spaces for artists-in-residence.  Though I couldn’t stay long, it was pleasant meeting some of the staff members and artists and seeing the work on display there.  Much of it was like what one sees in American Craft Magazine, which is to say, very uniquely designed, nicely wrought objects that are generally low on function but high in self-expression.

In recent years a lot has been said about the blurring of boundaries between art, craft, and design and what I saw at the Center in Houston certainly bears this out.  Much of it looked to me like art that has appropriated the techniques and materials of craft for its own purposes.  For someone like myself who works in isolation, it was a stimulating visit, and the four-hour drive home gave me time to ponder things like the future of craft, the nature of existence, and how obscure I really am.  No one at the Center even knew who I was.

My self-education

When I first took up an interest in working wood nearly thirty years ago I knew absolutely nothing about the craft and even less about design or the history of furniture.  I just had a naive desire to learn how to make stuff, so I bought a few of the cheapest tools I could find at Sears and began to ruin good pieces of yellow pine.  I hadn’t been doing this too long when, one day in 1978, I came across this black and white magazine at a news stand called Fine Woodworking and it totally blew my mind.  My conception of fine woodworking had been a set of kitchen cabinets with raised panel doors and a glossy lacquer finish to really bring out the grain.

This was what I aspired to someday create.  I had no idea there were still living beings who could do what had been done two hundred years ago much less bring new shapes and forms into existence!  I immediately quit my day job and began advertising myself as some kind of a wood guy for hire.  The plan was I would learn as I lied to people and the work came in.  It was insane, and my child bride was aghast.  I’m still surprised she didn’t flee with our little daughter back to the security of her father’s house.

The decade of the 80’s was a stimulating one because we added four more children to the family and were constantly on the verge of becoming street people, but I didn’t care.  I was a member of the Austin Woodworker’s Guild and part of a craft renaissance.  "There are more important things than making money", I told my bride, who was no longer a child and who now knew I was delusional.  I devoured the wood magazines and design books.  I bought a large used collection of The Magazine Antiques and learned about period furniture and art.  I got books on the history of furniture and fraternized with other furniture makers who were getting into the Arts & Crafts style.  I moved my shop from our garage into a small commercial strip center.

During this period I also got to know a few young architects who worked for firms that occasionally sent work my way. I would show them copies of Fine Woodworking Design books and photos of my furniture.  They would feign a polite interest, but over time I realized they were quite particular, even snooty, about design, and, even more revelatory for me, I learned they were all modernists.  I thought modernism was just a style — severe geometric buildings with flat roofs, tubular furniture with vinyl upholstery.  I didn’t know it was a theory one subscribed to.  I had no idea manifestos had been written, lines had been drawn in the sand.  The new had come and the old had been swept away.  Progress and innovation were at work, and history could never go back.  Even more importantly, I now realized my architect friends probably saw my own interests as a side note and me as an anachronism.

(Coming very soon in my next posting:
"The Future of Design!")

October 1, 2006 — Can functional furniture be
considered "Art"? — part 2

(The first part of this discussion can be found immediately following this entry.)

In my last posting I showed my profound ignorance of art but brought up the question of whether or not functional furniture might be considered as art.  Of course it depends on one’s definition of art and what furniture one is talking about.  There is certainly a world of practitioners, curators, museums, galleries, critics, and historians that would like to inform everyone else about what real art is, and there are those who are a part of the studio furniture movement who would like to have their work represented and accepted in this world.

One of the problems has been the issue of functionality.  I was talking to an artist friend the other day who describes his current work as a form of abstract expressionism. Without intending to demean furniture his view is that art is solely for contemplation, and if an object has practical function it is not art, though it might have some artistic qualities to it.  Most museums and galleries who issue a call for entries into their juried shows will specifically say that nothing with function need apply.  Some furnituremakers, hoping to blur the lines and gain acceptance, make table forms with tops that aren’t flat and sculptural forms they label as chairs but are difficult to sit in.  Two very skilled furnituremakers whose work I think successfully crosses the line into art are Wendell Castle and Derek Secor Davis. (They also have beautifully designed websites.)

Most "art furniture" tends to be smallish in scale and limited to a few kinds of pieces.  One wonders how many artsy end tables, whimsical benches, and little chests on stands collectors, museums, and publications can absorb before saying, "Enough!".  As this kind of furniture moves away from size and functionality it, of course, looses its power and credibility as furniture.  I may not have a definition for art, but I do know that to call something furniture it must be functional.  To say that furnituremakers should embrace functionality is really dumb.  It’s like saying trees should embrace their trunks.

When architects like Frank Gehry and I.M. Pei design buildings that are labeled as art or sculpture, functionality is still a given.  The municipal powers that be won’t allow their structures to be made unless they at least meet the local building codes.  Though functional on levels far beyond that of furniture, these buildings command to be called art on the basis of the monumental power they exert on those who see and enter them.

Seeking another direction art furniture flees both monumentality and function and now hopes to gain credibility as art by becoming more "conceptual".  For those who don’t mind being bored and would like to learn more about this approach go to the Furniture Society website, and then to the "FS After Hours" blog page.  From there the Manifestos For A New Generation can be downloaded and read.  If anyone really understands what this is about, please report back to me immediately.  I don’t want to be left out of being a part of the next latest thing.  I just can’t figure out what it is yet, and I have all of this self-doubt going on.  Maybe I’m not smart enough.  Maybe I’m not talented enough.  Maybe I’m too old.  Someone please help me!  I’m art challenged!

Actually I have read that stuff over and understand it as well as I want to, but I am not an artist and what I make is not art, so this move by some studio furniture makers to gain acceptance in the art world has little direct influence on me, but the cause of my ambivalence to the art world runs deeper than its inability to accept fine craft.  What follows is kind of off the subject, but it is important for me to say it.

For some time we have been living in a world of cataclysmic change.  Civilizations clash, democracy seeks to assert itself, millions of people cry out for freedom from hunger and oppression.  Millions more seek for meaning and God. Tsunamis, hurricanes, and terrorists all wreak their havoc. Globalization spreads its tentacles while the natural world melts and burns, and the list could go on for a while.  Other creative mediums such as photography, independent journalism, literature, film and music have all tried to give insight into and create awareness over these various realities, but since World War II the art world, by and large, has only found ten thousand different ways to contemplate its own navel.

How did I get it into my head that artists were supposed to be visionaries and prophets revealing both wanted and unwanted insight in psyche and culture, or they were to be bearers of light and beauty creating works that do good and feed the soul?  Must have been some out of touch classics professor I had years ago.

The "important" art I know about or have seen from the past sixty years, for the most part, has been opaque of meaning, boring, and often downright ugly.  It has not sought to speak to me as a person  (I am, at best, an abstracted viewer to it) or show that it understands me, but it craves for me to understand and interpret it, else why would all these catalogs and art criticism be produced to go along with it?  There I can read things like, "By bringing the background into the foreground in his later work, he made the entire canvas of equal importance, thus securing his own importance as artist", or, "Her multiple variations on red reveal her sensitivity to and mastery over color."  Oh thank you.

OK, I made those quotes up, but they do have a ring of familiarity to them, don’t they?  I know there are many artists who are relevant and accessible, but if they are traditionally representational or do anything that looks like it has been done before they have been excluded by the art world at least as much as furnituremakers.  I am not angry, but I am disappointed.  By turning in on itself, by becoming so self-referential art has blinded itself to the real power and influence it could have.  The art world is about as important as the world of chess  (though Duchamp might argue that it is slightly less important).

Dear Lord, please forgive me for wasting so much time on this subject, but I need to say one more itty bitty thing. There are more than six billion people on the planet and even in the poorest ghettos there are those who are expressing themselves with skill and power through their art and their craft.  Most of them do it in ways that are both traditional and original.  They don’t care about and have no need for the approval of the art world.  Neither do the landscape artists, wildlife artists, portrait artists, etc. whose work is not accepted.  Many of these artists are avidly collected and make a real living at what they do.

I was raised in a church that considered itself to be pure in doctrine and its members to be the only likely candidates for Heaven.  The reaction of those outside the flock to this attitude of exclusivity ranged from outrage to indifference, though some were humored by it, which gave rise to jokes about our denomination.  In one of them a man recently arrived in Heaven was given the grand tour where he saw millions upon millions who had preceded him.  Over in a corner he saw a small group of people separated off from everyone else.  When the man inquired as to who they were an angel told him, "Oh, they’re from the So and So Church.  They think they’re the only ones up here."

So, if the High Church of Art can’t perceive the rest of the art being made in the world, God bless it and move on.  Life is too short to care, studio furnituremakers.  Create your own venues.  Do powerful work that commands acceptance.

Just one more small thing.  Years ago I spent a summer in Hawaii where I learned that residents driver’s license numbers were the same as their social security numbers.  I was shocked to find this out because it was a time when one’s social security number was considered to be a very confidential thing.  The view of the state was that this number was not one’s social security number but only its equivalent.  Sweet.  So, if you ever see a lovely piece of furniture that deeply moves you, just remember that you are not viewing an object of art but only its equivalent.

WARNING!  The following recent pieces are not art.

September 7, 2006 — Can functional furniture be
considered "Art"?

I know I have disappointed my enormous fan base by going so long without a posting  (I’ve had at least six emails asking for more), so I must apologize.  I’ve been working rather than writing  (pathetic excuse) but I promise to try to do better.  For anyone interested in what I have been up to lately I have a New Work page on this website.

Because I labor somewhat in isolation, I recently joined an organization called the Furniture Society in an attempt to feel a bit more connected with others who make one-of-a-kind furniture.  The Furniture Society’s proclaimed purpose is "to advance the art of furniture making" and one way that it does this is through its extensive website. Within each of the major headings on the site are numerous additional pages that contain photos, interviews, directories and a wealth of other information related to the promotion of handmade furniture.  I have found some of the topics covered in the "Forum" section to be stimulating and entertaining, and recently participated in an online discussion there about whether or not functional furniture could be considered to be art.

As our discussion advanced it became clear to me that we were not talking about art as the making of things that are "real purdy", but art as it is understood by the gate-keepers of high culture, art as the creation of objects that speak to the history of art and are at the same time original, self-expressive, and push the boundaries of what has been done before.  Could artists engaged in contemporary art movements accept some functional furniture as a part of what they are about?  Could art critics, gallery owners, or the curators of art museums see some functional furniture as an expression of real art? Many Furniture Society members are academically trained craftsmen who are much more knowledgeable and articulate on these matters than I, and I began to feel a bit in over my head in short order.  It was embarrassing for me to realize that I didn’t even know what "real art" is in these days and times.

I read some essays about art theory on the Internet, but this only got me more confused.  When I tried to draw my wife, a most practical person  (which is a very good thing for me), into a discussion of these matters she soon became ridiculing and frustrated.  "I have eyes and don’t need anyone to predigest what art is for me," she said scornfully.  "Art theorists have over inflated egos and if they couldn’t attach their names to what they write, they would give it up in a minute.  You’re an idiot to waste your time on such crap when you could be sleeping."  It is true that late nights were the only time I had to devote to this pursuit.  Still, being the obsessive, impractical person I am, I’ve had to stay with these issues for a while until I could get some things resolved in my own mind.

I will say from the start that I have never considered my somewhat prosaic, very functional furniture as art. However, in a quest for answers, I have begun approaching friends  (some of them artists), family members (other than my wife), and clients with some of these questions, and every one of them has been unequivocal and unanimous in his (her) response that functional objects can be art and that some of my furniture is in that category.  My wife thinks I am secretly pleased when people call me an artist, but I swear I have no attachment to this designation. From the time I was in my early twenties I did want to be creative at something, but I never could draw or paint so I figured I wasn’t meant to be a visual artist.  When I was in college I sometimes checked out art books from the University of Texas library.  They had nothing to do with my courses, but, hey, what’s so hard about looking at pictures.

I also occasionally snuck into art history lectures just to gain a sketchy understanding of the subject.  In the late 70’s and early 80’s I tried reading the journal Art In America for a while, but I confess I could understand only a few of the articles  (and I have a degree in philosophy) and almost none of the art.  My appreciation for modern art seems to end with Picasso and Chagall.  When I learned that Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain  (a factory-made urinal turned on its side and signed "R Mutt") is considered to be one of the most significant art works of the 20th century, I knew I had hit an impenetrable wall of incomprehension that I would never pass through.  I came to realize much modern art just didn’t touch my soul, and I gave up.  That was twenty-five years ago, and now they tell me we are not even in the Modern period anymore.

When I got into furnituremaking I necessarily began to develop an interest in design, however, one of my early attractions was to country furniture of the 18th and 19th centuries — wardrobes, blanket chests, farm tables, simple frame and panel work with pegged joints.  I think this was because I used a lot of hand tools and had limited skills, and country furniture was something I could relate to.  On cold winter nights in my under-heated shop I imagined myself to be an early 19th century farmer making furniture in his barn for the homestead because there was nothing to be done in the fields.  I made a ton of stuff out of yellow pine, covering the shop floor with the aromatic wood ribbons that shot out of my hand planes and spokeshaves, and I was as unaware of the art worlds in New York and London as they were of me.  As I accrued new skills, tools, and exposure to the history of furniture, my design repertoire broadened.  I began to pay attention to positive and negative spaces, proportion, layering, texture, and color.  Hmmm?  I wonder if sculptors ever think about these things?

For ten years I leased floor space in a high-end showroom that also rented to antique dealers, and purveyors of fine home furnishings.  I had a half dozen representative pieces of my furniture there with business cards and brochures.  I wasn’t so much interested in selling things off the floor as I was in acquiring commissions from people who saw my work.  It was also a place where I could let a completed commission sit for a week before delivering it to a client just so I could see how showroom visitors responded to it.

One Saturday I came in to see what was going on and discovered a woman trying to hug an armoire I had made out of some local Texas pecan.  "I just love it!" she proclaimed with tears in her eyes.  "It’s a work of art."  I was certainly flattered but humbly explained that it was just a nice functional piece of furniture.  "Oh no," she went on. "It absolutely has an aura about it."  Well, I am always ready to admit that whatever minor gifting I have came from God, but I would never attribute anything supernatural to my furniture.  Still, I was immensely pleased that someone could respond with such emotion and enthusiasm to something I had made and even see a glow about it.  If I were an artist this is exactly the kind of response I would want my work to elicit.  Wait.  If I were a real artist I might prefer, "I have no idea what it means.  It must be art." or "It makes me feel edgy and uncomfortable.  I think it’s a work of art."

I have a twenty-four year old daughter who does bookings for performers, models and a couple of artists.  She frequently attends gallery openings in Austin and reports to me on some of the work she sees.  One recent show displayed mannequin-like figures completely covered in bottle caps.  "Dad," she exclaimed, "you can’t imagine how much time it took to make these."  Obviously she hasn’t spent enough time with me in the shop observing how long it takes to build furniture.  One young woman she represents is a performance artist who did a video installation of herself sitting down to a table and eating and drinking, and eating and drinking, until she vomited.  "Dad, it’s a powerful statement about over consumption in our culture."  Wow!  I really must get out and see some of this art instead of just experiencing it vicariously through my daughter.     . . . (to be continued)

My current project is this 8 foot long, curly bubinga writing desk.  I’m presently hand-cutting the dovetails for the curved front drawers.  Should be finished in a week.  It ain’t art, but it’s gunna be purdy.

October 19, 2005 — Zeno’s Paradox

Reporting in the October 2005 issue of Fine Woodworking on a recent gathering of craftsmen at the 9th annual conference of the Furniture Society, Garrett Hack writes, "Furniture makers are not a gregarious lot; most of us prefer the creative solitude of our shops."  I was struck by the truth of this little observation especially after my recent employment with a non-profit organization.

It took me twenty-four months of filing and phone calls, booking meetings where I hoped to raise money and bring people together for a cause, writing newsletters and sending out hundreds of emails to discover that I had spread myself so thin trying to appeal to other people that I had lost my center as a person.  While a gifted administrator or born "people person" would thrive under the same circumstances I eventually felt as if I had lost my way.  Talking for hours on the phone, sitting in front of a computer, preparing budgets — it never felt quite like real work to me; and having to deal with so many people! Wow, and I thought wood was warped!

Now, returning to the solitude of my workshop I sense my psyche coming together as I can focus on the challenges of building furniture again.  I see, too, that it takes a particular temperament to do this kind of work for a living, just as it takes being wired in another way to be a good administrator, salesman, or soldier.  Some people need the stimulation that comes from having strong and constant interaction with other human beings throughout the day, but I find myself energized by the opportunity to conceive and sculpt three dimensional, functional objects from scratch.

I am perfectly happy to spend hours alone in dialogue with a current project; and with a family, a part- time assistant, suppliers, clients, and, yes, I even have a few friends, I am as connected to the human race as I feel the need to be. I used to think I was a generalist who could be happy and competent doing a variety of different things.  I have recently come to the conclusion that I am a pretty specialized being with limited talents.  Weird, the illusions we can have about ourselves.

The seven dining chairs I have been laboring over just seem to go on and on.  Like Achilles racing the tortoise in Zeno’s paradox I can never quite reach the finish line.  According to this paradox the turtle will never be passed by Achilles because the swift-footed warrior is always just halving the distance between himself and the slow moving creature, and because there are an infinite number of halfway points, Achilles only gets closer and closer but never actually passes the tortoise.  Yeah, it makes perfect sense to me.  I keep halving the distance to the completion of these chairs (and halving the distance to my pay check), but no matter how much I toil I never seem to get to the end.  It would not grieve me at all if I never built another chair again in my life!  Oh, the joys of this calling.  The thrill of living on the edge of financial catastrophe is definitely back.

September 25, 2005 — A Cautionary Tale

In the triumphal return to my shop I had not envisioned slicing my finger on the bandsaw like that. Perhaps I had become hypnotized by the repetition of cutting out the same chair part over and over again.  Maybe the blade was dull, or I was distracted by the music being beamed to my auditory senses over the Walkman (notice the ear buds in the photo).

Whatever!  I know better than to ever have my hand directly in front of any moving saw blade.  It just grazed the front side of my right index finger, but it went to the bone.  I needed two stitches inside the wound and seven on the surface to sew things back together.  No muscle or tendon was touched, and I will retain full function, but in the 28 years I have worked with these machines this is my worst hand injury yet, and if I am not more vigilant and disciplined the next time could be worse.  I must constantly remind myself that the most valuable tool or machine I have at my disposal is my body.

I post this little story as a cautionary tale to all of us who put ourselves at risk every time we turn on a switch or pick up a mallet and chisel. To safely do our best work really requires a zen-like attention to the present.  So beware, Louis, of the music, the repetition, the worries, the fantasies, the conversation or anything else that might distract you when you should be giving an operation your undivided concentration, and any craftsman who smokes pot or drinks beer while working in the shop (I have known plenty of them and have been guilty myself) is a naïve, undisciplined fool.  In spite of this setback the chairs are coming along well, and I will post a photo next week.

I just finished reading two thought provoking books by two brilliant writers.  The first is Cormac McCarthy’s latest novel, No Country For Old Men.  He is the author of All The Beautiful Horses and other tales of modern cowboys and psychopaths (not to imply that cowboys are psychopathic).

The other is a work of science and philosophy by Edward O. Wilson called Consilience: The Unity Of Knowledge.  Wilson, a biologist who has dedicated his life to studying ants, is also extremely well read and a true Renaissance man.

He is an unequivocal materialist and reductionist who argues very persuasively for a cosmos that is knowable and leaves no room for a God other than a distant non-intervening one.  He really thinks that science can provide a framework for answering every important question human beings might ask.

My own experience tells me that God breaks into people’s lives all the time, and there are things going on in the universe scientists will probably never be able to explain, but Wilson is a cogent thinker and impressively knowledgeable.

September 20, 2005 — First Blog Entry

Well, in this my first blog entry, I have to admit that I find it curiously exhilarating to be placing my personal thoughts on such a potentially public venue as the Internet.  I say "potentially public" because, even though they will be here for anyone to view, it is hard for me to imagine others consistently venturing to this site to read the reflective, introspective, and sometimes tortured ramblings I am sure to produce being the melancholic, philosophical creature that I am.  Who would read this thing anyway?  I certainly don’t have the time to read anyone else’s blog.

Since these entries are tied to my furniture making website I should make the disclaimer here at the start to anyone who has come looking for craftsmanly tips or to discover what glue I use.  While I will certainly be making constant references to my enterprise as a craftsman, I will more likely be reflecting on the glue that holds relationships together or the glue that holds atoms together than I will on adhesives like Titebond or Gorilla.

Look — after spending six to ten hours a day in the shop, when I finally sit down to write late on a dark Texas hill country night, I don’t think I will at all be interested in telling about the speed and precision with which I can cut mortises with my plunge router.  Then, again, I don’t know where any of this will go, and I could easily let slip with a tidbit or two every now and again.

Actually I have just returned to working fulltime as a furniture-maker after nearly two years of only sporadic incursions into my workshop.  From October of 2003 until the present I was on the staff of a Christian missions organization that mobilized and led teams of Americans to go into Russian orphanages to share the Gospel and distribute humanitarian aid.  I had already been doing this kind of work as a volunteer since 1999 before accepting a position as Executive Director.

This is something that most of my furniture clients don’t even know about.  After all, what self- respecting craftsman would take on a title that had the word "executive" in it, and what better place to confess my sins that right here on my own blog?  So, I want to finally get everything out in the open right now and admit it.  For the past two years I have been working as a closet executive.

I had taken the position during a time of crisis in the organization.  It was only supposed to be a temporary gig that would still leave me a couple of days a week to pursue my furniture, but the learning curve was steep and I soon became obsessed with wanting to do the new job as successfully as I could.  In my innocence I thought I could do both things well, but it didn’t work out that way.

Like a married man trying to have another woman on the side, I became a total flake with my furniture clients — ignoring deadlines, telling lies, taking on jobs and then giving them up, never returning phone calls or email inquiries.  On the other hand I just couldn’t tell these people what I was doing.  I was afraid I would lose them if I did.  Of course, like anyone who is unfaithful, I wound up losing them anyway.

I told myself it was all for the children, and it was.  I’m referring to the Russian orphans of course.  I have journeyed to Russia, the largest country on earth, nearly twenty times in the past six years — St. Petersburg, Moscow, Murmansk — inside the Arctic Circle, and Chelyabinsk — east of the Urals.

Russia!  Sometimes I think this is a country with a deep soul.  Other times I think it has no soul at all.  There is a saying that goes something like this: Russia is an enigma wrapped in a mystery.  Well, I have been into dozens of orphanages there and met hundreds of children by now, and if I were a millionaire I would have brought many of them back home to live with my wife and me.

We have, in fact, adopted one teenage Russian girl.  She is an addition to the five birth children we already had.  Lena is her name and she is definitely a piece of work, as they say.  Her story and that of her adoption could be a book in itself, and perhaps I will get around to telling it someday, but I have a lot of things to write about.  Anyway, I finally repented and have returned to my shop, where tomorrow I will continue work on a set of seven pecan dining chairs.