News from the Studio

On Sunday May 12 I'm participating in a small art show & sale with a few local friends. There will be paintings by Bess Fraser and Marge Leach, mosaics by Heather Weinrich, and some furniture by me. We'll be downstairs at Southminster United Church (entrance near Bank St. & Aylmer Ave.) from 1pm to 8pm on Sunday May 12. More details here: bessandmarge.ca.

I'm really happy to see that the Strap Bench was featured in the this week's "Coveted" article in the Globe and Mail.

Here's a little highlight video looking back at IDS13. My bench seat gets a lingering shot at around 0:20. It coincides nicely with the narrator saying "...the latest and most innovative contemporary designs." :)

I returned home recently after a few days spent in the whirlwind that was IDS13. My work got a good response from the crowds and some very good press as well.

The people at IDS have released another promo video for the show (for the opening night party) and this time my chairs linger on the screen for maybe a whole second. That's ages as these things go. Always nice to be picked out of the crowd!

I just finished a new product for IDS13, the Web Mirror. Like some of my earlier one-off pieces, this explores patterns, negative space, and the use of accent colours combined with natural wood tones. When I design something like this I can see dozens of permuations in my head, and the hard part is picking just one to actually make.

It's that time of year again: the people at the Interior Design Show have released a little video to get people excited about IDS13. If you're paying very close attention (and not blinking) at 0:45 there's a glimpse of my chairs in amongst a big grid of other work.

I was surprised recently to learn that Canadian Home Workshop magazine has put me (and six others) on their short list of "Canada's top woodworkers", aka "our nation's brightest and best workshop gurus". I think they'd be disappointed if they saw my shop, but I appreciate the honour all the same.

I just put together a complete re-do of my website. I'd outgrown the hand-coded version I've been using until now, and this time I built something with Joomla as a foundation. I've also moved my news blog onto the site, rather than having it hosted over at Posterous. The new site is cleaner, more flexible, and more responsive; i.e., it works on all different sizes of screens. Click the logo to start at the home page. Let me know if anything looks seriously wrong!

Here's a quick detail/teaser shot of a bench I finished today, part of my collection for IDS13. This is white oak and webbing in a "random" weave (I say that in quotes because it actually takes quite a bit of planning to come up with a pattern that works properly). I'm feeling ever so slightly less stressed-out about the show this year. There's still lots to do but having three pieces done and another on the way is a big relief.