Material Innovations

The medium that I feel most invigorated by working with is space, and the relationship that is formed within space between people and objects. My task as a maker is to create living spaces—places that create context for dwellers, act as a reflection of the natural world, and meet the inherent needs of the soul and the body. This exploration of space/place is cross-disciplinary, as it draws on aesthetic, material, philosophical, sociological, and theoretical concerns. I have arrived here by way of the 2-D art world, a growing interest in the realm of 3-D building and woodworking, and finally, a recognition of my love for being the hand behind shaping and arranging experiences/environments for other people.   I am moved by the idea that one can choose, over and over again, how to shape oneself, and I believe that the creation of place can be a radically transformative part of this reality.

I love discovering how the crafting of space can be used in order to evoke and provoke particular feelings or modes of being, and finding that people generally respond to various environments in the same way.  It is fascinating to me that we are inherently drawn to certain kinds of spaces more than others. What I am coming to recognize as the frustrating part of working with such an elusive medium is that it is terribly difficult to express in a succinct manner.

My life has been rich with the influence, love, and support of sincere makers of all manner (primarily in my family), including educators, writers, musicians, cooks, bakers, seamstresses, gardeners, craftsmen/women, artists, and designers. Of course some of these fields produce and require more handiness than others, but I have always been acutely aware of the distinct relationship between the creative mind and the work of the hand, and have been consistently encouraged to discover how this relationship will manifest itself in my own life. I have grown up within a framework of homemade, handmade, can-do simplicity, where nothing is ever wasted or taken for granted. Thus, my roots are literally entrenched in living responsibly and sustainably, although these fashionable “it” words are practically devoid in my extended family’s vocabulary. My grandfather has spent the past 75+ years of his life making his own tools, mixing spoons, furniture, maple syrup, etc. not because it is the green thing to do, but because he finds joy in being resourceful, using his hands, and being a steward of the materials he finds before him.

The geographic and cultural place I am coming from has been paramount in shaping my fundamental interests and concerns. I have spent the majority of my life in Santa Barbara, California, which is a place particularly obsessed with beauty; it is image-conscious in every sense. Each factor of this place exudes perhaps an over-developed attention to the need for beauty at every turn. This has translated into a desire within me for deep and careful consideration of every aesthetic choice in my life. In terms of my making, I crave natural, pared-down materials and processes because this reflects so much of what I have encountered and been conditioned to appreciate thus far in my life. The environmental and cultural context I am working from revolves around a sustained commitment to good stewardship of resources, deep regard and appreciation for the natural world and for persons/people, rigorous devotion to the continual shaping of one’s character and one’s mind, and a fierce desire for connectivity and relationship beyond pretense. These values translate into the pressing awareness that whatever I create, and therefore, introduce into the world, must represent and uphold these ideals, no matter what. I cannot be a maker with the motivation of merely selling a product, making a buck, or creating something cool and innovative for the sake of originality; rather, I must support a way of life which will continue to “keep [the] body and soul alive” (Thackara, emphasis mine). And more importantly, I want to live in a way that not only sustains my body and soul, but also those bodies and souls for whom I am potentially designing, as well. In my own work, this means approaching each opportunity with candor and clarity about what I care about, and why I create the way that I do.

The world at large is in a state of distrust—and this distrust has engendered greed, dishonesty, confused communication, fierce individualism, lack of connectivity, and surprisingly little regard for what is beyond the scope of one’s own desires. Consumption consumes us.  Modern culture seems to leave scant room for modes of living that do not move within the ebb and flow of a hurried, harried existence. However, this does not mean I am without hope—I see a shift happening, at least within the small culture I am a part of, towards more thoughtful, careful living, where one is no longer thinking primarily about their own consumer needs and purchasing power. I am, of course, an active participant in the messy state of affairs as they exist today, but my role within this framework is to make the simple daily choices that support and better my own localized sphere of influence.

The maker’s role in the world is to commit oneself to the powerful act of authentic creation, and in doing so, to also arouse and awaken a spirit of truth within others. As someone who constantly feels the need to create, I fear making insignificant work, particularly because I feel that the world is already crowded with meaningless and insignificant things. Though I do feel that I make out of obedience to my inherent need to be a creative being, there is often the underlying anxiety that what matters to me may not matter to anyone else—and this feels somewhat empty to me. My hope as a maker is that I will continue to be obedient to this necessity for continual creation, and that I will overcome my fear of failure through deep faith and trust in my own process.  One major aspiration is to work for either an artist or a design firm that deals with the arrangement of space in a way that excites and encourages me, and that has an ethos that I feel I can support wholeheartedly.