New Works

Hullo Duckies

2 Weeks have gone by that I have been able to absolve myself of monetary obligation, and have waded hip deep into the waters of self employment in the woodshop. The water is cold and crisp - but refreshing and I feel like I'm on the brink of being able to jump into the deep end soon.

One replica piece - resized and proportioned is complete. It is a coffee table version of George Nakashima's Conoid Table. His work reaches people on a level which is difficult to surmise in words - but the Conoid Table's leg system exudes a crude, structural simplicity and strength which compliments it's waverly and freeform feathered walnut top.

I knocked the size down from dining room table size for a couple of reasons. The main being that I went through one of Nakashima's original lumber suppliers over at Hearne Hardwoods in Pennsylvania to pick up a piece that concievably Nakashima would have worked on himself. This proved quite expensive and limited my options. Additionally - I selected a wood for the base that due to overlogging and rarity, is next to impossible to get in forms that are sustainably harvested. But my man Andrew over at A&M Wood Products in Ontario had a private reserve that hit the market and sold out like Radiohead Tickets. Luckily I secured approximately 24 boardfeet of the 2x4 plantation grown East Indian Rosewood - half of which I devoted to this project and half of which to the next.

It was Nakashima himself, an MIT and Harvard trained architect, who praised the riddance of drafting boards from furniture design in order to create at the hum of a sawblade at 8000 rpm. It is in this same notion in which my second project was designed. Frustration at the drawing board led me astray from being able to physically manipulate and work with the material in human proportions.

The side table/wine cabinet is named Lyric - as to suggest our baser need to create and a general and dishonest conviction that we cannot. Our makeup - greater than the powers of hereditary traits, greater than nurture - has given us a seperate brain - a hemisphere of our central nervous system, 4 pounds of highly complex matter which is devoted entirely to the acts of creation. But rarely do we allow our nonlinear dreams or irreverent desires to manifest into anything of beauty. Rarely can we rise above ego. Rarely can we shed our trepidation and fear to begin this process. Rarely do we feel like we have the ability to sing. In fact, the end result will not truly sing unless we can absolve our creativity of ourselves.

The Lyric Console Table is constructed of solid hardwoods and can store up to 40 bottles of wine. The bookmatched East Indian Rosewood, Black walnut top, feet, paneling, and inserts are meticulously joined together with Guatemalan Rosewood butterfly keys and splines. And finished in 5 coats of natural walnut oils and a beeswax polish.

"Muso, the unchanging formlessness behind all phenomena, which leads to a rejection of the "perfect" (the linear) in favor of an irregular, free formed beauty...True beauty is only attainable when the workman has achieved a freedom beyond his own individual ego. Yanagi advocated the surrender of self before beauty, and he believed that handwork fostered a good life." - Mira Nakashima

Jeff.e.martin@hotmail.com

Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasty - Lykke Li

She makes me wet


"I'm Good, I'm Gone"

Non-Euclidean Logic: Being Unyielding through the Creative Process

"As he pondered what form the building should take, he felt all the weight of architectural history bearing down on him. "Since I am an architectural historian," he thought, "My architecture should be wholly new, dissimilar to any architecture that came before.""
-Taken from an interview with Terunobu Fujimori








A good friend sang this song to me late last night.

Well, you're in your little room.
And you're working on something good.
But if it's really good,
You're gonna need a bigger room.
And when you're in the bigger room,
You might not know what to do.
You might have to think of
how you got started
sitting in your little room.
dada da daum dada da da daum da.
yada da daum dada da da daum da.
ya da da da da, na na na na na,
na na na ya na na na na na.

"Little Room" - The White Stripes, 2001

Open Invitation

Slap fin buckeye.

Can your radio tune into the near South? Do your blood vessels circulate and brainwaves oscillate? I'm talking the land of lore, cabrone. The state in which the entire seabord was passed as official, un-own-able, free from privatization - motherfucking parkland from Northern tip where it tickles Washington to Southern tip where it rubs its dirty iron rich soils on California.

That's right. The seas are patrolled by swarms of Great White Sharks. The mountains and valleys and rivers provide natural divides between the rarest types of forest stands in the world - from Port Orford Cedar to Oregonian Claro Walnut to The Redwoods. Sequoia, man.

I'm talking about the rarest collisions of temperate rains, warm weathers, and divinely rich soil producing the best wines in the world - deep in the Willamette Valley. I'm talking girls who grew up in this muck have tonque rings and are terribly flexible and have wonderfully gregarious child bearing loins.

What I'm fucking talking about, duuude. Is this.

I'm talking about inner tubes and camping under groves of Walnut crowns on the side of roads in bivouac sacks. I'm talking about hiking through (only the good portions of) 400 miles of linear coastline protected by law. I'm talking about the finest wine and lumber shopping in the world. I'm talking about dune buggies and canyons. I'm talking about a modern day Huck Finn surf trip throughout Oregon - collecting lumber, fine wines, and objects of lusty desires in and amidst this.

I'm talking two weeks. I'm talking big show. I'm talking Zevon beeyotch. Send lawyers, guns and money - because I am Ahab.

This is the new Oregon Trail. And you're at the reins of this dastardly wagon.

Boomba,
Clat

Sam Maloof

Furniture is a fickle business. So similar in relation to trends, social relevance, and popular culture as is fashion as an industry. There are only a select number of craftsmen who build things of lasting importance and grace. George Nakashima, James Krenov, Art Espenet Carpenter, Greene & Greene, Gustav Stickley, Wharton Esherick, and Sam Maloof are some of the honourable builders who have shaped our living spaces with thoughtful design and purpose over the past century. And few names can be added to that list with a true sense of longevity in mind.

Sam Maloof, the son of a Lebanese immigrant, died last month at the age of 93. His elegant designs and impeccable execution in claro walnuts and rosewoods has been admired and copied as a style since he first began working in his shop over 60 years ago. Working around 80 hours a week up until his death, Maloof worked without shop drawings or pencil lines. Everything was cut with the foresight of eye and mind, and the patience of his hands.

Ray Charles once felt a Maloof chair - blind hands grasping at the sensual creation. And each time after that recognition, he was able to discern which pieces were Maloof pieces under his large hands.

One of Maloof's greatest structures is his own house which he built for his late wife, Freda. In a lemon grove in Northern California Maloof pieced together a custom house, room by room, as he could afford it. Without formal training in woodworking, nor architecture, Maloof's house is a national treasure in its miraculous design, construction, and layout. Offcuts from his furniture provide the structure for which they lived.

Maloof's style and approach will undoubtedly inspire the future generations of woodworkers to come.

10.5

Coding for a Genetic Diaspora

The ever quickly crumbling wall between our species and the one to precede ours is spreading its rubble of intent into more and more social circles. And the debate over the science, the ability, and the capital trade of human genetic selection is as fragile as it is profound.

About 100 years ago, one monkey fell out of a tree and found some really delicious dandelions to gobble on. This poor monkey was probably eaten by a tiger, or perhaps a land shark. And Shark Erectus was king of the Sahara for a while longer. He would go on patrolling the vast tundra in a hovercraft carriage pushed by canteloupes thrown by bonded monsters of some grave description or another.

But before this furry feast occurred, that one monkey shouted out some props to his homies in branch land, professing the dopeness of dandelion. And more and more monkeys started risking their lives and families wellbeing to taste that savoury sweet petal. I doubt it was a prolific call of intent to propel into a more daring and courageous and aware being. Monkey probably just stuck his finger in his ass, pulled it out, smelled it, and fell out of the tree.

But that grizzly mistake that cost him his limbs and the nurture for his babies and his trust fund account accelerated our evolution into a different species.

Homo erectus was about and they didn't quite cut their teeth on Fiery Earth before our subgroup of family Hominidae, Homo sapiens - or Wise/Knowing Man, was tossing some gnarly spears into their caves, clubbing their children, drinking their blood, feasting on their antelope, crushing minimum 7 fermented coconut wobbly pops - and still killing it on the dancefloor. Making forceful reproduction with their woman all night long.

And now here we are. Characterized by superior intelligence, articulate speech, and erect carriage. Or a more succinct definition - plagued with addictions, unable to care for one another or our living areas at a level that, at bare minimum, causes equitable damage to protection. We are losing our competitive advantage to ourselves - for the first time in prehistory, but not in our history.

But - we have now come quite close to not only understanding the Human Genome - to understanding our genetic makeup - but we are within the hour of being able to positively affect genetic alterations in our offspring before birth. And I guess due to happenstance or co-evolution - these selections of our children will be for sale. The business of it may be a byproduct of this leap - but it bears equal importance, or perhaps more, to the projected success of baby Homo Creatus I.

This world of ours will no longer be human - and creation of life itself will be on the TSX. That last point is more of a rabblerouser for the neasayers. But human is something this planet's leading race will no longer be. They won't be worse - or a subspecies with that sort of negative intonation. They will have IQs in the 200s, they will have penises like dual truck exhausts, and chrome coloured eyeballs. They will all have the ability to be prolific authors, musicians, scientists, politicians, doctors, and educators. Or maybe all of these trades will be obsolete. Self doubt could dissapear, addiciton may vanish as the manifestation of human problems, the world may become clean again. But it would no longer be a domain in which human's may be observed.

And those, now on in their years, doubting that we will reach this hypothetical juxtaposition - I challenge you this:

Did we, homo sapiens, evolve?
Are we therefore a stage in evolution?
Do you believe that you we are the last stage in evolution?
Are you arrogant enough to believe that 3 million+ years of direct evolution will halt for you and your flatscreen TV and your Hybrid car?
Is the technology now available to modify one of the next generations?

What if the people in charge of the these creations see the high faluten potential of the next race to be better than us?

Does the planet and all of its inhabitants deserve that?

Now, what frightens me, and what makes me a highly functioning human in the most accurate of definitions is that my empathy compels me to cry out of what will happen to those who will not be able to afford this advancement. As 80% of the world cannot find clean drinking water and adequate nourishment now, this number will dramatically increase to a number closer to 100%. Our stratified wealth and access to basic human rights will now encompass genetic inequality as well. And it's evolution, and it will absolutely occur.

But in the end it may be for the better. That's what's up for debate.

What is human art worth? What is the human experience worth? What is our contribution - or will it be little more relevant than handprints on the wall of a cave? And if that what it all breaks down to - wouldn't you want one of those handprints to be yours?

Will the next species be able to survive without murder and competition? Will they be the lasting fruitful race to one day be crushed by an asteroid in some sort of divine comedy just as the last known Homo sapien falls silently into his grave with a chuckle and a cigarette - in some sort of museum in outer space?

Or is their conception born unto vanity more than good-natured intent? And does that not make their race flawed from the start?

I don't think any entity will lament the loss of our race. Nor should they. But if we do end up fading away due to Genetic Modification I should hope that very little of being Human - beyond our art - should remain. I only hope that their super-human abilities should be able to at times mimic the unintentional wail of strained vocal chords in song, our bizarre clothing that taps into the weird – Caterwauls and Cumberbundts, or to recreate the abstract disgust that manifests in the raw beauty of crafts, that they too should be able to dream things that make them wake up in fits of laughter.

And that everything else should be their's.