craft

Black Walnut Bedroom

I would like to share these images of a black walnut bedroom, including a king-sized bed, side tables and a dresser, designed and built with my best friend Cody Rolph. We started this project in 2017 and finished it in 2020.

The design and joinery of the pieces in this group hopefully don’t arbitrarily feature pretty slabs of wood, but intend to capture or rather release the light and cadence of the old trees we collaborated with to build humble furniture. We try to see our human efforts humbly in the light of the wrought out witness which the trees spent their lives fashioning.

One of the trees we used for this came from the Walnut River valley near Augusta, Kansas, where it was uprooted and set for a number of years suspended by its roots and crowns. My personal experience suggests this process of drying “in the log”lends a quality to the color- different to other air drying methods. Another walnut tree we used came from Cody’s land in a draw on the county line between Greenwood and Elk counties. A third came from a farm near Winfield, KS- on the banks of the Arkansas River- where we scavenged the rejected leavings of a logging operation. All of these trees have peculiar and noble stories and voices, as expressions of a land and of its mineral and even spiritual atmosphere.

There are over 500 ebony and walnut butterfly joints throughout the pieces. Many of these serve a structural function, in knitting together knots and fractures throughout the slabs. We made the decision to use them aesthetically and rhythmically as well, in an attempt to interact with the movement and tension present in the slabs and their juxtapositions. Every butterfly was individually made and cut in by hand. This isn’t necessarily a testament to skill, but to the frail beauty of hand made lines versus machined perfection. The long labor isn’t to impress, but hopes to be a contemplative act of prayer in process, and to invite and serve that same response in the viewer.

In the same contemplative spirit, all of the structural joints are “through” mortise and tenons, with hand cut dovetails on all of the casework and drawers. The hardware are re-purposed spikes from a derelict centenarian railroad bridge located on Cody’s land.

Thank you for taking the time to look at these images of my friend Cody’s and my celebration and wonder at the crystalized voice of our God in the ligneous song of our brother-trees. Thank you especially to Steve Hebert for having the gifts and knowledge to be able to photograph these pieces for us.

Christogram

Christogram in black walnut as the central panel in a pulpit that my friend Taylor Johnson is building.

Spoons for Poets

Hummingbird Spoon in Cherry

This spoon was carved on commission to be given as a gift to a Kansas poet and photographer, Michelle Terry.

Amos’ Spoon in Osage Orange

I carved this humble eating spoon for my friend Seth Wieck, a poet in Amarillo, Texas, in reference to his epic poem, Ulysses Arrives in Amarillo.

Bowls From an One Hundred Year Ash Tree

Five bowls turned from part of a salvaged Ash tree from Peabody, Kansas. The tree was well over one hundred years old and was nearly five feet in diameter. Most of it we milled into lumber but some was set aside for making wooden bowls. It is a humbling and awe-filled experience getting to work with material from such a being as was this tree.

Circle Table in Black Walnut

I built this round walnut table for a young family over the summer and into the fall. The base is mortise and tenon. I hoped for it to carry some of the feeling of the vaulted interior of a timber framed barn. The wood for the base came from gun stock maker in Wichita who gave me some timber from his stock before he passed away. The wood for the top was harvested from my friend’s land near Fall River, Kansas.

Chalice and Paten

The cup has been waiting for a plate for years. This summer the opportunity came to carve one, and to send them both together to their new home with my friend Robbie Pruitt.

Notes From the Overground

Workshop Exhalation

The Spiritual Mechanics of Labor and Rest

The Spiritual Mechanics of Labor and Rest is a relief print edition carved and printed by hand from a block of linoleum. It is available for pre-order in the Baumwerk Shop. It will be an edition of 100 prints. Numbers 1-75 will be black ink on white paper, while numbers 76-100 will be sepia ink on cream paper. There will be a separate listing for each color option. The black and white prints will be ready for shipping sooner on March 23rd, while the sepia and cream prints will be available a few weeks later.

The Spiritual Mechanics… began as a way of building a repository or archive for many of the symbols that help me to understand my place and function in the world and the Kingdom of Heaven. It is, after a fashion, an info-graphic which serves a developing theology around the ancient kinship of labor to worship.

At the heart is a worldview which sees an holistic unity between what is spiritual and what is natural. These are crude words and a crude image which is looking towards something that is deep and nuanced in its beauty and inherent goodness within the mind of God. My hope is that in here is an echo of God saying of the earth and creation, “It is good”. Also the echo of the Words of the Creator resident in every atom and particle. May it be an echo of John the Baptist saying “change your hearts and minds, because the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” May it be an echo of Jesus saying “it is finished” on the cross. Heaven is coming to earth and our labor here is not in vain.

The Spiritual Mechanics of Labor and Rest is also a prayer and an offering. It is the noise my heart makes towards God, offering the smallest and most mundane moments of my days as He simultaneously offers them to me. It both seeks to say and asks if it’s really true that labor spent shoveling dirt in a garden , roofing a house, or cutting a stone before God can be as significant a spiritual lever as the most noble words of the priest in the cathedral, or the pastor behind a pulpit, or the hands of a healer in a tent.

I have more openly exposed my heart in this image than in my previous work, where it is shielded by narrative. In following posts I will seek to lay out the symbolism and stories behind the details depicted here, but it should be understood that I have sought to use images like these because for me the words are fundamentally insufficient to describe what it is that I see and seek.

I also hope that you will consider purchasing this print. Many of you know my ambivalence towards the marketing. However, I believe I am called to engage the “marketplace” with my work in a way that settles with my conscience and ethics. Here is a link to pre-order The Spiritual Mechanics of Labor and Rest.

Trestle Table in Black Walnut

I delivered this table to my client’s office last week. It is good to finish a piece and be able to celebrate it. In spite of this I tend to experience a wide range of emotions and second guessing when I finish a job. One thing that never changes though is the gratitude I feel at the opportunity to be a woodworker, one who engages the authentic witness of the trees. They always have a real story to tell about our God and His majesty and faithfulness.

The Sacred Process

Is labor a sacrament? The invitation of the Eighth Day? A sacred collaboration with the living God? I can’t help but to note that the call to labor in the garden came before the curse of toil. I am certain that labor is about more than just earning my bread. There is something deeper there, not just for the artist, but for the ditch digger and the roofer, the farmer and the nurse. “Whatever you think, it’s more than that…” ISB.