I became a carpenter shortly after graduating from art school.
It felt natural; a way to support myself that was as creative and fluid as making art, but also incorporated the challenges of changing tasks and problem solving on a larger scale.
The progression from general carpentry to restoration and timber framing came when my wife Hazel and I bought our first house in Limerick, Maine.
It was a late 1700s Cape Cod in great need of restoration. Its frame was good for the most part, but many of its original details had been replaced over centuries.
In search of vintage replacement parts, I knocked on doors of old farms that were in disrepair and varying stages of neglect, hoping to gain permission to dismantle and reuse what was no longer needed by the owners. The old barns were now liabilities as they no longer served an agricultural use and were succumbing to age and the elements. Long since empty, these magical places were often filled with vintage architectural treasures: doors with painted graining, window sashes, wide floorboards, wainscoting, hewn timbers, spun window panes, entire staircases and entry ways. Scavenging what I could, we restored our Cape and my passion for the architecture of the past was ignited.
I used the knowledge I gleaned about old materials and methods through this process of restoring our house to then do the same for other clients. We encountered many different buildings and end uses: sometimes it would be a barn becoming a house, or a house becoming a barn. Some structures were beyond repair, but could serve as stock for other structures needing replacement parts. Often, we would make an entirely new structure from various old materials.
The act of dismantling structures that were hundreds of years old was an education for me, as were the older folks I met along the way. I learned much was done by figuring out how to take things apart. I have always loved seeing the mark of the craftsman (artisan) left visible in the process of making something useful - whether it be the scribe marks on timbers, the axe and adze marks of hewing, or the day’s tally scratched into the fresh brick before it went into the kiln.
The process of building has continued to be a largely creative process for me over the years. It has allowed and inspired the use of my formal training as an artist while engaging me on historical and cultural lines as well.