Invisible Labor

This oak stair tread is simple and unpretentious. It is unassuming in its clean slab form and its function is merely to support weight and provide stability. It gives no indication of the labor required for its formation. The time spent at the lumberyard going through the racks to find suitable pieces. The drops of blood lost when my hand was caught between the rough sawn boards. The transportation time of the material back to my shop. The hours on the planer and jointer getting everything to same thickness and the edges square. Each tread is two pieces of oak joined together requiring thought to coloring and grain (so they don’t warp over time). Then there is the gluing, sizing, sanding, and the cutting of tenons. My job is really to make all that work invisible. To create something that appears as if it has always existed.

Neighborhood Commerce

My friend with a dull chisel owns a coffee shop (Gene Coffee).

I love his coffee and I have the means to sharpen a chisel.

This makes commerce simple. I sharpen his chisel and he gives me coffee. The barter system and removing money from the equation creates a human transaction. It’s an agreement of value from a place of sentiment. An acknowledgement of another’s skills and the worth. It might not pay the rent on the shop but I try to use some form of trade whenever I can. I like shrinking global economics to a manageable neighborhood size.

Utilitarian Vs. Aesthetic

My friends at Barbarella Hair Salon approached me recently about building some new storage for their back room. They wanted something inexpensive but aesthetically attractive. The result was a utilitarian piece with clean sliding panel doors and a simple black arborite counter for mixing colors. I had some pieces of vertical grain fir plywood I’d been holding onto that I used for the panels. I stained these a dark walnut and used lighter clear-coated maple edging to create a contrast I thought was interesting.

I like the challenge of a budget. It forces me to come up with creative design solutions and also helps clean out some of the clutter in the material racks.

The photos below are the cabinets loosely assembled in the shop. I'll post photos of them post installation on the Funhouse Facebook Page later

The Creative Community

There have been concerns about the longevity of our shop space. The lower part of the Mount Pleasant industrial area is in the midst of swift and radical change. Old warehouse blocks are being razed and towering structures of steel and glass are being constructed in a tight circle outside our unassuming bay doors. The building that houses the shop is also home to a recording studio, an upholsterer, several artist studios, and a gallery. It’s a community of artists and small businesses that works under the same roof as part of Mount Pleasant’s fast diminishing creative force. High rents and condo developments are making this central area widely unavailable to artisans.

I’m not opposed to gentrification. It’s unavoidable and unstoppable. I am also very aware of just how fortunate I am to have shop space in the center of this city. I’m thankful for every day I get to work in that space. The good news is that it looks like we get to renew our lease for another three years! I’ll try not squander that time and continue to use and contribute to the creative community it is a part of.

Waldorf Diaries--Resting

The lobby is quiet.

The last major event of 2011 with its figure skaters, its orchestra, and its indoor forest was completed successfully. The hallways that were crowded with mask wearing revelers less than twelve hours ago are now empty and silent. The innumerable Christmas parties that preceded it are fast becoming distant memories from last year. At this precise moment I think I’m the only person in this entire hotel or at least the only one who is conscious.

Even the building seems to be sleeping. Its foundation and its floors have been given a respite from amphetamine driven bass beats—a break from the weight of thousands of feet—from spilled champagne—from bodies crushed together in an annual frenzy to commemorate the passing of twelve more months and celebrate the changing of a single digit. It deserves a little down time…

Waldorf Diaries--It's a Shining Christmas

My Crosstown Christmas vacation has come to an end and I’m back in my cozy hotel room preparing for Christmas Eve. I like to watch a seasonal movie on Christmas Eve to get in the proper spirit. There are many to choose from but this year being alone in an empty hotel I’m going with the Christmas classic, The Shining. It was that or the other hotel Christmas favorite White Christmas and let’s just say I’m a big Kubrick fan.

My favorite parts in the Shining are the shots of young Danny riding his Big Wheel trike through the hotel corridors. I have an affinity for hallways. The passages project a sense of mystery with their lines of closed doors. These utilitarian lengths of space, though often stark and unassuming, are the architectural realization of potential. Potential for comfort, threat, warmth, love, violence, safety—

Their space exists as a benign entity—it’s our choices that determine the potential.

Merry Christmas!

Light

During these dark pre-solstice days in the North West when the impenetrable clouds and steady drizzle diffuse and obscure the low set sun it’s easy to fall into a state of perpetual melancholia.  The light we find must come from sources other than our closest star.

Yesterday I crossed bridges and travelled through tunnels to deliver a table to the outer reaches of Vancouver’s suburban sprawl. Though it was still early in the afternoon the indicator on my dashboard was telling me I needed to turn on my lights. My windshield wipers intermittently cleared the accumulating precipitation. I’d spent a few extra days finishing the table top—carefully mixing the stains to match the other pieces in the client’s house and flattening the grain to get it to the point of a smooth mirror surface. It turned out beautifully and the client was very appreciative. She even gave me a hug and a bag of her home made shortbread cookies. These exchanges are what get me through the Vancouver winters. I need to spend time to ensure whatever I produce creates a little extra light.

The table leaves mid-process

Crosstown Christmas

The words “Christmas vacation” bring to mind tropical beaches, ski chalets, or maybe the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center in New York. I have friends who are embarking on such winter holidays. I’m going across town to spend Christmas in the Lee Building. The building I lived in for two years when I moved back to Vancouver from Massachusetts.

The beauty of hotel living is in its flexibility. My friend called me shortly before he left town and asked if I wanted to housesit for him while he was in Mexico. I said, “Why not,” and he left his keys for me at the coffee shop downstairs on the corner. I packed a change of clothes and a toothbrush and drove across town to start my vacation. The Lee Building and I share history. It was where I first began my quest almost three years ago for “home”/”place” and I am comfortable within its solid brick walls.

Another notable fact is last December in my apartment on the fourth floor of this building I began this blog both as a way to promote my business and to pursue the concept of “home”. Since that time it has had many thousands of hits from six of the seven continents (I’m waiting on Antarctica). Though I greatly appreciate the tremendous support and feedback I have gotten through this endeavor the truth is that this is primarily a personal exercise. It’s in writing this blog that I am able to gain insight into what it is I am searching for. A connection to community but also a connection to “place” within myself. I’ve found that in reconciliation with the past there comes an acceptance of the present and it’s that acceptance that allows the formation of “home”.

I’m still working on this and likely will be for a lifetime. For now it’s just nice to be home for the holidays.

(Did I mention my friend has a beautiful apartment full of beautiful things?)

Resting Place

“Could you bring some rope?”

A request for a length of rope from a friend in a psychiatric facility is one I would usually not accommodate. Especially when that friend is in the facility following a suicide attempt. It falls into the same category as bringing weapons into hospitals. You just don’t do it.

In this case, however, it seemed like a sensible thing to do because we were going on an outing. My friend had spent close to two months in the woods in an attempt to starve himself to death. Thankfully his effort failed. Hikers rescued him after he fell into a river in a delirious state. Our little outing on this sunny Sunday in December was an endeavor to retrieve his wallet and other belongings he said were in a plastic bag close to his former camping spot. He told me the rope might be necessary in order to repel down a steep embankment.

I stopped at a hardware store on my way to the hospital bought 20’ of rope (A 20’ drop-off was the maximum I was willing to face) and I picked up my friend who signed out with me for the afternoon. We drove up into a mountainous wooded area and parked where the road ended. It was a beautiful afternoon. The sun cut bands of light onto the mossy forest floor through the towering evergreens. As we walked through this soft quiet canopy I listened as my friend told me of his months in the forest. How he had found a large corrugated pipe where he created a “nest” for himself. Even in that “determined to die” state he had fashioned himself a space to exist. A space that was his. A home.

We finally reached the steep drop and it was over 20’. More like 100’. We could’ve slid our way down but our chances of getting back up seemed unlikely so our mission was aborted. For me it was never about retrieving a wallet. It was about spending time with a friend and being a part of his journey from the forest. I'm glad he's making his way back.