Some of the most unique work I've ever been commissioned to make was a floating stair and adjoining balcony floor for a beloved client in Charleston, SC. I used milk-paint, a traditional finish typically only seen in windsor furniture, in an homage to Richard Diebenkorn's Ocean Park series. This project was featured in Dwell and The New York Times.
I was a furniture maker and woodworking instructor for over a decade. During that time I had the pleasure of bringing designs to life in a number of fine and studio furniture shops, from Thos Moser to Troscan Design. Pictured here is a set of cherry dining chairs built to spec.
I had the opportunity to learn the craft of skin-on-frame boat building at the design-build school I later taught at. Every rib is steam-bent, every joint hand-tied with artificial sinew. This canoe, made of doug fir, ash and mahogany, clocks in under 30lbs and is translucent when backlit. There's really nothing like pushing off into the water in a vessel you shaped and assembled every piece of.
I had the time of my life as a scenic carpenter in Charleston, SC. I built sets for national tours of shows like Color Purple, RENT, and Cinderella. I was lucky enough to collaborate with Tony award-winning designer, Chris Barreca, to conceive, model, test, and fabricate this stand of paper and steel birch trees for a performance of the opera Eugene Onegin. I placed every single strip of paper by hand from the basket of a scissor lift. Tedious, but worth the end result.