Echoes
The big jobs ran down for the moment and I’ve been working on a commission for a small display shelf—a design that clearly blurs the line between sculpture and utility. This one also brings in long history through the legacy of the wood I’ve put to use in the creation.

In the late nineteen-seventies an elderly man came into the shop carrying a four by four, rough block of wood with the ends painted red. It was about thirty inches long. The wood turned out to be a block of highly figured curly western maple. He told me it had been sitting around his garage for some time. He had never come up with a project that was quite worthy of such a special block, and he hoped I would find a use. With that he gave it to me and left with my thanks.

Now the special old block has been following me around for twenty-five years. Every now and then I consider the charge to do something worthy with it. Until last week, the right design simply had not surfaced.

The display shelf concept I had designed called for a sculptural “backbone” that would be affixed vertically to the wall, with three shelves that would notch into it from the back and cantilever out both sides. The backbone piece would be deeply carved into an undulant wave-form. I went out to the shop and measured the old curly maple piece again and realized it was just the size I needed.

I remembered, too, that I had another piece of old western maple I could use for the shelves. This plank had been cut from a tree before I was born, and had a nice curl to the grain. I used most of it to make bunk beds for my daughters when they were young. I was intrigued to remember another interesting echo: that maple tree had grown in the area that is now Priest Point Park, just a quarter mile away from the house where the shelf will be installed. I appreciated all the threads of memory coming together in this one project.

The clients liked the plan and this week the old lumber has been carved, smoothed and polished to become a display shelf for a collection of glassware. I’ll install it next week, and document the project.

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I mentioned in an earlier entry that I would add photos of the “Lyrical Worktable” to the website. There’s one on my home page, and a few more on the “woodwork gallery” page located at:
http://www.donfreas.com/pages/woodworkgallery.htm
On that same page there’s a link to download a .pdf that includes the drawings on which I based the design, and some photographs of the fabrication process.

If you have questions or comments, please call or write.

Don Freas
don@donfreas.com
- posted by Don Freas @ 11:11 AM

 
Lyrical Worktable
My creative practices have been overlapping. In the last two years I’ve been asked twice to design furniture for writers' studios. It’s great fun, and a good challenge, to design a desk or worktable that suits the habits and requirements of an author. Because writing is an artistic practice with which I am familiar, the confluence fulfills a fantasy of my own as I create the heart of an artists dream studio.

In this case I designed and built a piece that could be seen as a worktable with sculptural detailing, or as a sculpture to be used as a desk. More than that, though, I focused on making a worktable that draws the author into the creative process, and draws the artistic expression out of the author.

The room was already designed when I was asked to create this piece. My intention was to make furniture that utilizes the space in such a way that it becomes supportive to the practice and evocative of the art that swirls and is captured therein. The “Lyrical Worktable” will fit and fill the space, and focus the room.

The author had certain needs, certain desires, and through a series of conversations (or interviews) was able to verbalize those to me as we initiated the design process, and as he responded to the ideas that came out of our initial conversations.

I am often surprised with the direction designs take and this piece is no exception. Now that it is complete and ready to install, I am pleased with the surprising outcome. The table fulfills a unique promise of commission work that I always find fascinating. In response to the patron a piece is formed that could not have come from my own isolated impulse to create, or from the simple desires of the client. The result is truly an alchemical combination. The shape of the space and the structure of the perceived and communicated needs and desires are combined with the story of my years in practice with wood. The resultant object is unique.

The author’s house is not yet complete. I have set up the Lyrical Worktable in my own house for storage and show for the next few months. I’ll post photos and a .pdf showing stages of construction on my website under “current work.”

If you have questions please contact me. Thanks,

Don Freas
don@donfreas.com
360-357-2850
- posted by Don Freas @ 10:40 AM

 
Persistence
I was asked to prepare a poetry workshop for a class at the Evergreen State College. I threw together a few poems by poets I love, and a few of my own. I gathered some writing exercises. I always think about what would be the most important thing to hear if you had an interest in poetry, and I was going to have your attention for just two hours.

My sense is that the most difficult point to get across is that writing only happens when you’re writing. It sounds obvious but after many years of making poems I still have to remind myself every day. Poetry doesn’t happen when you’re thinking about writing, planning to write, building your writing studio, dreaming about being a writer, remembering about the great phrase you thought of today, reading the poetry you love or listening to someone talk about writing. It only happens when the pen is on the paper and the words are flowing out onto the page. Ink, in a long squiggly line with seemingly random breaks.

Second only to that is the reality that the good writing will be hidden in a lot of, let’s call it “other writing” to avoid a more derogatory term. In the workshop today I said writing starts at the bottom of the first page. My friend Ariel said “so how about if we just start at the bottom of that page.” I like Ariel he’s a great teacher and a great talent. And he knew what I meant.

Often the good writing comes after some bad writing. At least for me. Something has to spill out to prime the pump and then a flow begins. Not always, but often. Alchemy. Magic. Something is triggered that couldn’t have happened at the beginning. It happens because I’m writing, the pen is moving, what I began with has morphed into something else. Even my handwriting changes; I can see it on the page when I look back—that was the place, right there! And it wouldn’t have happened unless I had overcome myself, begun the process, written the first useless words that made room for what I really wanted to say.

I have an unpublished poem about this:

PERSISTENCE

These first words, so
boring so familiar, so much so
that I don't even want to say them again.

I am committed, though,
and spill them into the trough
to watch as they burn, to add more:

"you again," "and you."
And in the heat and light—no—
under, behind, despite the light and heat

something new emerges to ask
that I love the soil, too—the seed
and seedling as well as the fruit.

-Don Freas

If you don’t make it through that first page—every time—you won’t know what you’re capable of. You can think your way out of it, easy. Particularly if you have written something resonant that has attracted attention. Attention tends to make you forget you’ll still have to write the detritus to get to the gold. At least that how it works for me. If you begin again the color will rise, count on it.

- posted by Don Freas @ 6:18 PM

 
Raise the Sun
My friend Jacinta died almost two weeks ago. She was a great lover of poetry and we often passed poems back and forth. In addition to her steady friendship, Jacinta was a loyal fan of such steadfast advocacy and persistence that if each artist had just one fan of such splendor it would be more than enough to support a lifetime of creative expression. I miss her; many people miss her.

RAISE THE SUN from my first book of poems “In Creation” was one of her favorites. I wrote the poem before I knew Jacinta but it is very much about her awareness and spirit. I offer it here in honor of Jacinta McKoy. Read it aloud, in the morning, for best effect.

RAISE THE SUN

What if the sun wouldn’t rise unless you were watching?
What if all that light and heat reached all places seeking
your palms, hoping to find them upraised in welcome?

And what if the sun, having found you attentive, having
found your open hands, could settle in and illuminate
one more day; what if you were what the sun wanted?

And what if the light, as it fanned out toward you
and washed past you, what if that light relied
on your intention to animate form and vary color?

What if your love filled in shadow and polished
water’s dance to a sparkle? Would it always be an honor
to draw trees taller and encourage shadows,

to deepen ravines with the waving of your arms?
Could you run your hands along ridges
each morning, sharpening their shape?

What if all it took was you remembering to rise,
to go out and simply bear witness to the immanent,
to just for that moment attend to the bend of climbing light,

making it rise: would that be a privilege? Could you love
enough to warm the side of a planet; would the sun find
you waiting each day, no matter what might come?

-Don Freas

- posted by Don Freas @ 6:16 PM

 
Making Form
Like poetry, woodwork and sculpture are practices that produce. With intention we head into the creative realm, and focus our energies on expression. We discipline ourselves to stay with the project through the difficult times—when we're not sure where we're headed, when it looks like it couldn't come out as we'd hoped or dreamed. By moving ahead one moment at a time we come out the other side—changed by the process, and with something to show for our passage.

This is particularly true with creation of one-of-a-kind objects. From the moment of the origin of the vision, the artist is in a realm of invention, using whatever he knows to draw down the image from the imagination, and give it form. The practice includes all that has been gathered from past experience as a language that can be applied to the new project. And each new project gives us new words to add to the accruing language of making.

As with writing and poetry, when the practice is the goal art is honored, and we can engage the magic of creation. The object made could be called a side effect, what is left over—the way a tree spins off juicy apples. If we focus too much on the apples we lose everything. Part of the beauty of the finished object is the energy is holds—evidence of the practice that produced it. That's what we feel in the unique, handmade thing.

- posted by Don Freas @ 6:12 PM

 
PRACTICE WAITS
Poetry is a practice. We don't learn to make poems, we develop a practice that makes space in our lives for poetry. Poems are a visible result of that practice, but not the only result, and maybe not the best result. A strong practice once developed can weather slow periods, slumber through quiet times and spring to life when we need it. Like any other practice we may not know what it is for until we need it. Then suddenly the years and hours focused on the work give wings to our creativity and it all makes sense. Practice becomes us.

SECOND NATURE from my second book "Natural History" speaks to the nature of practice:

SECOND NATURE

It takes a long time, years
of practice. Make the moves
over and over—slowly
at first then faster. Memorize
patterns, train ear and hand,
learn to play with sound
and sense. Harvest
silence from crowded corridors,
rage from empty meadows.
Drill cadences deep,
carry them everywhere.

Then, when you are threatened,
when you have to move fast,
your body will know what to do.
Motions unfold like breath,
well-worn pathways channel
the moment into song,
and—never doubt it—
making that one poem
will save your life.

-Don Freas

- posted by Don Freas @ 4:45 PM