After majoring in art in college I graduated with a desire to work with my hands and to create things concrete. The first concern was to create a means for supporting myself. I spent years in the building trade working for others, gaining experience in both rough and finish carpentry.In 1987 I established my own business, Washburn Hill Woodworking.
In many ways my print-making career seems very much the fruit of those years. Learning to work with wood, to measure, to line things up and judge by eye, to assess a design problem, to develop solutions with a client, to visualize something in three dimensions, to draw up plans and follow the myriad steps to help plans gain physical life: was this not an apprenticeship of a sort? Learning to interact with tools, materials, methods, and other craftsmen in a developed and directed way: was this not training for visual expression? Now my materials are wooden blocks and paper, lines, shapes and colors, but it still feels like the same process of visualizing something, analyzing it into parts and then getting out tools and proceeding to give it real form and color.
Sunapee Fair, August, 2010
And what to add now? That I am a beekeeper, happy to be back in honey after finding mite-resistant bees? That my print-making avocation, which fifteen years ago put an end to my career as a carpenter with its challenges and successes, has almost entirely put an end to my career as a hobby farmer? That we happily heat with wood, using a masonry heater to heat not just the house but also our hot water. That older son Nathaniel is now applying to colleges, an avid rower and captain of the Hanover High School crew team, and, being taller and bigger than me, the real beef around the place when it comes to splitting wood, cutting trees, or hefting anything really heavy. That younger son Asher is a wonderful skier as well as being a really good student, and can hold his own just fine on the baseball field or the basketball court. Isn't your life as well an adventure of transformation and change?
Sunapee Fair, August, 2007
There is another interest that has been developing over the years which is in a way quite relevant to my work and my art. I have since I was a teenager been an off and on church-goer. For a few years I served as a deacon of our town's Lyme Congregational Church. In 2002 I became also a member of Lyme's First Baptist Church. I have served as a deacon of that church, and am currently its moderator. Recent sermons I have shared while leading worship at this church you can find here.