One of my roommates had a birthday recently, and when I thought about gifts it ocurred to me that she reclined in her family’s old armchair pretty often. She’d told us a story of how it had once had a matching footstool, but nobody in the family could seem to remember what happened to it, so I decided to make her one. Full of figuring and learning the lathe (yay!), this project brought some challenges, but was an overall good learning experience. Continue reading
Yes, I took a Food & Art class this past semester. While I have mixed feelings about its value for me at the time I took the course, its final gave me a chance to exercise some urges I’d been having to make something relevant, powerful, and aggressive. Continue reading
Mid-second semester, I became interested in the idea of creating spaces, especially spaces that are completely unusual in their context. Like converting a work studio space into a cave that’s still completely functional as a work studio, so trees and rocks would open to reveal cabinets and drawers, etc. That would be a far more complicated version of what ended up being my final for Visual Language 2. Continue reading
Yup, I went to Poland. To help build a timber frame synagogue. A replica of the 1731 place of worship. It was pretty awesome.
The Timber Framer’s Guild was commissioned to build this structure, and Handshouse Studio organized a student volunteer opportunity to help with its construction. My group flew into Warsaw, where we stayed for about three days, and then traveled to Sanok, where we were for about twelve, to build. We then went to Krakow for about two days and headed home. There are plenty of pictures and memories from the trip, and I will do my best to summarize them here 
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The Virignia Military Institute conducted a timberframing project near their campus in Virginia, and members of our Sculpture department were lucky enough to participate. Continue reading
This is a crowning achievement of the past year. I’ve been interested in woodworking for a long time, and tried my hand at various furniture endeavors in the past. I took Joinery last year and was hooked. And the Poland and New Hampshire projects only encouraged my fascination with puzzling together pieces of wood to create structure and form. My practical interests overcoming the potential artistic ones, I decided to embark on one of the bigger woodworking projects I’ve done yet… Continue reading
With the SIM Big Show coming up, and submissions being called for, I decided to submit something I’d been meaning to make since early in the semester. I have a penchant for thinking up practical objects using whatever I see, like a tree that’s a lamp, for instance. And that’s what I originally had set out to make. Continue reading