I’ve started a new essay and realized it would be easier if I supply the published essay I will be referencing as I continue to write. I don’t think there are any conflicts doing this, I asked Joshua and Mike of Mortise & Tenon Magazine if it was okay to read it on the podcast a few years ago and they said it was perfectly fine. So, rather than just assume people have read it, I’m starting with it and will continue to build on a few of the themes through out the coming months.
There are a few fat brook trout in the cold mountain stream that runs through my neighbor’s farm. On occasion I walk to the bridge that once held back a bulging mill pond, peer over the edge, and dodge my head back and forth to miss my own reflection. Sometimes they aren’t there – it’s too warm, or they’re hiding in a place that I’m not able to see – but more often than not I’m rewarded, and I see them there bathing in icy water.
Brook trout are very susceptible to changes in their habitat. They prefer cold, clean water in order to maintain a stable population. Particularly sensitive to low oxygen, pollution, and changes in pH, they are considered an indicator species – one that gauges the overall health of an environment. I’m happy they are still living in the stream my neighbor protects. I see them there and feel reassured.
When I think about these trout, I think about myself living together with them. We share this place. They spend their days doing brook trout things, I spend mine doing human things, and hopefully we don’t have conflict. When making decisions, I take beings like the brook trout into consideration as much as possible.
I care very much for my brook trout companions; after all, they indicate the health of my local environment. I believe my upbringing has something to do with this perspective on my connection with the plants and animals with whom I share space.
Getting Back To My Roots
I grew up in an area of the U.S. that can be described as prime timber land. We lived directly on the Mason-Dixon Line and about a mile from West Virginia, as the crow flies. I did all the things you might expect when you think of rural living in the U.S. I helped can vegetables from the garden every summer, and we had family gatherings centered on harvesting corn. We children built and maintained hay castles in the barn and split and stacked firewood in the fall. My Mother taught us how to manage our garden and pick the harvest. “Pinch this bean. See how plump it is? That means it’s ready!” My father took us on walks on Sundays and we identified trees. “Here, bite this twig. What is it?” My brother and I would nibble and exclaim, “Black birch!” Dad would nod in agreement.
Being connected to our resources made an impact on how we lived growing up, and continued to affect the way I lived after returning home to start my career as a woodworker. I had the ability to pursue both conventional and green woodworking because I lived in an area where I could carefully select and cut a tree down for my carving interests, while making furniture and smaller items out of kiln-dried lumber supplied by our hobby sawmill. My environment made it easy to become a woodworker.
Eventually I became interested in carving small items that I could use in my daily life: spoons, bowls, cups; I had caught the green woodworking bug. It made sense to me, to keep this creative work as simple as possible – find tree, cut down tree, make things.
I quickly found myself seriously dedicated to carving, and I had the urge to decorate the things I was making. I hunted for a connection to something larger than myself: some sort of cultural symbolism. After some internet sleuthing, I was strongly drawn to Sámi designs from northern Scandinavia, most likely because my spoons are based on Swedish spoon carving traditions. But it felt wrong to use Sámi symbols in my work. Trying to navigate this fascination was difficult; I was so drawn to their designs and symbolism, but it seemed like cultural misappropriation to cover the things I was making with designs from another culture, a culture which maintained a rich tradition of meaning behind those symbols.
I wondered why I was so attracted to having that personal connection to specific symbols. After some thought, I realized that it was really about having some sort of cultural identity – feeling connected to people, place, and land. The tension I felt came from a sense of detachment from my own cultural identity, an identity that can be a difficult thing grapple with as a citizen of a colonial country with such a recent and heartbreaking history.
I needed a place to start. “What is something my grandmother would recognize?” I asked myself, and immediately thought of quilt piecework – part of a heritage that is held close to the heart of my family. Most of the women I’m related to have been involved in textiles in some way and I felt a special connection to the history and tradition of American quilt making. As I thought more about it, I realized that the meaningful link that I possess to this form of folk art could become a relevant part of my own tradition and cultural identity.
After wrestling with these difficult questions of tradition, cultural narrative, and creativity, I met Swedish slöjd craftsman Jögge Sundqvist. We were at Greenwood Fest in Massachusetts, and I happened to sit across from him at breakfast. I was eating my oatmeal with a spoon I had carved and painted with a quilt pattern called “Ohio Star.” After I finished, he looked over the table at me and took my spoon.
“Have you made this?” he asked. “Yes.”, “Ohhh. It is very good.” And he handed it back to me. Later, he and Beth Moen, another skilled Swedish carver, approached me to learn more. Was the pattern something local from my area in the U.S.? I told them both about the quilting traditions where I’m from, and about my family’s strong ties to the art. The next time I saw Jögge, he invited me to visit his workshop in Sweden. I couldn’t miss that opportunity.
Lessons From Other Places
When I travel, I spend most of my time listening and watching. I’m usually very quiet; an observer. As a matter of fact, it typically takes me at least a year to process what I learn after traveling. I consider it part of a transformative inner experience that manifests in the work I make as a carver. Traveling to Sweden started an important inner dialog about handwork, craft, art, the land, and my role in all of these.
I learned that most houses in Northern Sweden are painted red, not because red is the best color, but because iron oxide was a by-product of the copper mines in that area and it was the least expensive paint a farming family could buy to protect the outer walls of their wooden homestead. This connection to their immediate environment made the choice for them. To paint the homestead red became synonymous with Northern Swedish tradition. The same seemed true of using split pine for weaving baskets, and birch for carving treen. The historic use of these trees has more to do with their abundance than with being the best possible material. Let me be clear: these species are perfectly suited for their intended use, but in some areas of the US, we are accustomed to considering only ash and oak for basketry. Split pine works just fine. It’s not that the Swedes have a secret password to handwork, but in learning to use local materials from them it’s a great advantage for some of us in North America who have a similar climate and a few of the same trees. It makes translation easier.
I returned to the U.S. feeling a little conflicted. I had spent time with Beth Moen and Annelie Karlsson on my last week of travel and they had both shared their individual transformative experiences relating to their work. True craftswomen with backgrounds in design, they had at one time made studio-quality furniture but decided they didn’t enjoy what they were making. It didn’t make them happy, and they both decided they were no longer going to try to live up to the idea of what they should be doing, but to start making what they actually wanted to make. That, for me, was a very important distinction which helped me question my own motivation in my work.
So, having observed all of these things in Sweden, the questions of motivation were in the back of my mind, simmering.
Making The Connection
A chance meeting with a fellow carver, Hape Kiddle, on a woodworking trip to Australia brought me back to his studio to watch and listen to his thoughts on art and craft. Hape is a self-proclaimed “sculptor who works in wood.” Originally from New Zealand, he is Maori, a greenstone carver, turned jeweler, turned wood sculptor. One of the first conversations I had with him was about how culture is directly related to people’s experience with the land. This statement solidified something that I could feel and see but had no words for until that conversation.
How was my cultural identity related to the land?
Up until that moment with Hape, I had squinty-eyed thoughts about how green woodworking might translate to other cultures and bioregions. Could I really champion my version of green woodworking to someone who lived in the desert of Arizona or Northern Territory in Australia? Did that make any sense? Maybe there are other ways for artisans to creatively connect with their environment.
Through all of this searching, I’ve come to believe that we, as humans in the world, should be crafting things using the materials available to us in our specific bioregion. To be clear, I’m not suggesting a dogmatic approach but a macrocosmic understanding of what surrounds us. I, as a resident of a certain latitude and environ, have access to specific types of wood. I use what is available, what actually grows here, and that changes if I travel. The tools I typically use are specific to the type of woodworking I do and the hardness of the trees I use. Harvesting times are specific to hemisphere and types of forest. All these factors I took for granted until I traveled to a country in the Southern Hemisphere – all the nuances helped me question how I should relate to my western colonial culture. How does what I’m making fit into the world? Am I contributing something of value or am I a part of a larger problem? Should everyone be carving the way I have been taught?
Perspectives From Other Traditions
Traveling gives opportunity for many unique experiences. I’ve touched the Pyramids of Egypt, humbly observed burning funeral pyres in Kathmandu, and witnessed 20,000-year-old ochre paintings in Australia. In Sweden, I marveled at the knowledge that the house-sized boulders which seemed out of place in a flat field were, in fact, flung there by giants; that frost is actually created by the breath of Thor’s horses. Upon hearing these explanations I was stung by the sharp pang of loss – where I’m from, frost just kills your tomato plants. Every place I’ve traveled has a culture rooted to an ancient past that is missing in my personal colonial context. We’ve cut ourselves off from seeing our connection to the Land.
Speaking in broad terms, this cultural connection is missing in the U.S. However, in Braiding Sweetgrass, First Nations biologist Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer explains the reciprocal relationship humans have with the Earth: that we are (regardless of cultural identity) part of something larger than ourselves and can positively affect our relationship with the rest of our natural community. Often, in most indigenous cultures around the world, this cultural truth is reinforced with ceremony and tangible symbols of that relationship.
If we turn our attention to First Nations artist, Beau Dick, we see the role of the artist/ craftsperson in a harmonious incarnation. Dick (1955 –2017) was a Kwakiutl Northwest Coast artist whose work stands firmly in two worlds – a culturally significant context of his own Kwakiutl framework, and in contemporary art galleries. As a Chief, artist, and activist, he reinforced the best example of craft as an expression of a collective set of beliefs that are upheld from outside the artist ego. Dick was using his unique talent, his artistic lens, to make concrete the deeply held spiritual beliefs of his culture. He created works which not only used his creative voice, but tapped into our inextricable connection to everything around us. This, I think, is the highest calling of a creative person, and it leaves me feeling hopeless and sad for what has been lost in the torrent of American popular culture.
I ultimately believe that, collectively, we would be better off recognizing our spiritual connection to what is right outside our homes; it can be found in the growing forests and racing water. If we recognized our link to the brook trout’s life, would we be as willing to make changes that affect the quality of the water, and push it further upstream into the dark corners of the creek?
It is valuable to have tangible access to this link, and craft is a fantastic way to become more connected with your immediate environment. It could be found in working with birch, if you are in Maine or Sweden, or wild cherry in Pennsylvania, or Huon pine in Tasmania. If a project needs glue, that can be made with pitch or boiled hide; if it requires cordage, it can be made with dogbane or nettle. Resources are abundant. My point is, recognizing the relationship and the reciprocity with the land is what is important. Being connected to the Earth is important – I dare say, it’s what is missing. What if we were to look upon the things we make as the manifestations of a spiritual connection to the world around us? The methodical decision-making of a timber framer; the slow meditation of cutting a mortise and tenon from local green wood can be as much a part of spiritual living as the ethereal concepts of enlightenment and discipleship. Thinking of my great-grandchildren as possible inhabitants of a timber frame is a powerful testament to seeing connections in all things. Paying attention to how the trees are harvested, and how they impact the environment around the timber frame is equally important to this understanding of how to be in the world.
Personally, when I carve, I feel this missing link in my culture. I’m jealous of the craftsperson who has thousands of years of continuous history of draw upon. This craftsperson grows upon a deep tap root which can stand up to the whirlwind of pop culture. When I’m carving, I also want to tap into something larger than myself. If I’m telling a story with my work, I prefer it to be accessible to a wider audience. I like concepts that most folks can understand, or at least recognize. I don’t want people to blinkingly step into an art gallery and read a paragraph on the wall in order to understand what I’m doing. I want everyone to make the connection to story and place immediately.
I can see it in my mind’s eye: “Ah. Yes, the Brook Trout ladle. We bring it out in the Spring when the stream is rushing. The snow melts off the hemlocks and drips cold, fat drops on the back of your neck.” That’s my place. That’s where I should be as a craftsperson; to make objects worthy of the brook trout. One could do no better.
Thank you. Wonderful thoughts Amy, and the quilt patterns on your spoons are special to me as my wife is a talented quilter. As a spoon carver myself I have thought at times how unique it would be to incorporate such quilt patterns on the spoon handles. Then you did it. Very nice.
Cheers, Michael W. O’Brien