For me, wood is the perfect medium. It’s beautiful and timeless, unique and versatile, and opens up infinite opportunities to explore new species, techniques and looks.  In my mind, things made of wood never go out of style, because you can take a piece of furniture and give it new life by changing the finish, or adding embellishments to it.

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I like to think of myself as a creator, and in order to create, I believe there has to be a story.  I love working in wood because wood comes with that story built-in.  I choose to highlight the natural defects and history in a piece of wood and to bring out the natural beauty that it has hidden under those layers of age and abuse.  I want to see every knot and crack.  I want to see the growth rings and the defects because that’s the story of the life of the wood.  Of the tree that gave it to me. If you’re building things out of wood, then you have to respect that that material was once a living thing.  If that tree was mature enough to be cut down for lumber, then it likely has a long history; it lived through storms and floods, through forest fires and insects trying to eat it.  Maybe it had a disease at some point.  Every time I find a defect in wood, it makes me think of what was happening to that tree at that moment in its history, and I want to celebrate it.

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You could spend your life cutting around knots, filling worm-holes and trying to hide the blemishes, but then why work with wood at all? Why not work with man-made materials?  There are lots of synthetic materials out there, but I build with wood because I share common ground with it. Literally.  Therefore, I think of woodworking as a celebration of the natural beauty that only a living thing can offer.