Fleeting Thoughts like Falling Leaves

One of the reasons I usually enjoy living in Omaha is that I'm basically a small-town guy at heart. And let's face it, Omaha is kind of a small town. I want to think I'm a big city kind of guy; that I'm drawn to the largeness of movement and noise and action, but it's really not true. I travel for work several times a year, usually to larger cities, and after a few days, I usually can't wait to get back HOmaha. Even so, growing up in the midwest - first in Kansas, and for the last 10 years in Nebraska - I think I've had a tendency to take for granted the richness of the midwestern landscape. Who isn't at least a little drawn in by a soft breeze flowing over wheat fields before the harvest? Or the simple pattern of rows of corn, soybeans, and whatever else farmers grow around here?

The leaves started turning and falling in my Benson neighborhood several weeks ago. Initially they fell fast and hard, pulled down by the weight of a premature snow. Soon a wet, yellow blanket was covering the ground.

Over the course of the last few weeks bursts of rusty reds and oranges have joined the yellow blooms in a dying explosion of color. I don't remember the colors being this vibrant before. Or being so drawn to the contrasting tones. I'm nearly overtaken every time I turn a corner on my drive home from my studio. It gives me chills to see the yellow leaves flutter from the tops of the trees after small gusts of wind pull the stems from their branches. I don't remember being this influenced by nature either - maybe marriage is making me soft.

As beautiful as the view is now, we all know the landscape will soon give way to a neutral wash of white and brown. But as with the rest of the natural landscape, the lines and contrasts of brown against the impending snow will display a subtler beauty that is harder to see.

These same past few weeks have been busy ones for me. I've been stealing as many hours in my shop as I can trying to turn these star fabrications into tables. They are also a simple gesture at both capturing and honoring the beauty of the Fall and coming Winter landscapes, respectively. The uniform shape of each piece - both in the star form and each contributing diamond shape - echoes the symmetry and simplicity of the fallen leaves. And like a leaf, the simplicity of their form sometimes masks a design that is more complicated the closer you look; it was not easy cutting and fabricating between 200 and 300 individual, uniform pieces of wood together. As I mentioned in my previous post, these pieces are my attempt to - dare I say - turn over a new leaf, in attempt to make work that is more environmentally sustainable than I've attempted in the past. I like to think that with each successive piece of furniture or art or whatever you'd like to call them, that I'm honoring the materials as much as I can.

These tables are also part of my contribution to the ORGANISM project in the Empty Room. If you'd like to see how they turn out, please stop by ORGANISM throughout November and help us grow the space. Don't forget to bring your hammer.

A "Star" of Sustainable design? Probably not.

My involvement in November's "Organism" project in the Empty Room is mostly about chairs. And design. And building. However, sometimes it will only enhance the project by providing tables on which to rest your favorite beverage, book or both. To that end, I've created the beginnings of what will be two small coffee tables. I've been a little under the weather the last couple days, but was able to work on these over the weekend. Both follow the construction technique I developed with the "Ark" chair. However, with these tables I've focused more on the overall pattern and shape in the fabrication process. The larger piece measures about 3-feet from each star point to its opposing twin. The whole piece is about 3/4" thick. This will be the table top, which will be paired with a set of thin, spindly turned legs. The fabrication of the larger finished piece was made by cutting about 300 (288, to-be-exact) individual diamond shaped pieces that have then been glued together, one-by-one. The smaller piece will be the same design, but feature a modified wood/grain pattern from the larger one. The woods used in the larger piece included paduak and red heart (alternating in the center), followed by a layer of honey locust, with the remaining encasing made of different varieties of walnut. The smaller piece is red heart alternating with canary wood, followed by a pattern of red heart and honey locust.

For those of you who are interested in sustainable design, well... this doesn't exactly fit the bill. However, I do have an olive branch of sorts to offer, since each of the diamond shaped pieces is cut from the scraps of other projects. So, I've at least found a way to work with what would otherwise have been waste in a process that embraces the spirit of sustainability, even if the underlying wood I used was not. I look forward to hearing any of your suggestions about incorporating other sustainable design and fabrication processes.