house, tree and person drawings.

I have been thinking about the narrative quality inherent in wood as I work on my artist statement for an exhibit:

We love the spoken and written word, and yet the objects crafted by the human hand tell stories too, often with even greater sincerity and meaning. One does need to understand the language, and that requires some attention.

Each piece of wood tells the story of the tree from which it came. Where there’s a knot, there had been a branch. Where the grain is wide and straight, the tree had grown quickly, straight and tall. Where the grain is crooked or dense, the tree had grown in defiance of harsh circumstances.

I have come to view my own work as framing and illuminating the story told by wood. A craftsman might choose to wrestle it to submission, making it do things to satisfy his or her sense of mastery and accomplishment. I am curious about more gentle relationships, in which the full range of textures, colors and narrative qualities of the woods might emerge and find greater voice.

Much of what I do is inspired by my concerns for the environment and I adhere to these thoughts:

Woodworkers have a unique opportunity to reveal the beauty and value of our native woods in a way that encourages understanding and preservation of our trees and forests,
and when an object is carefully and lovingly crafted, it is empowered to express the concerns and character of its maker in a voice that can resonate for generations.

I am reminded of an old Freudian child psychiatrist I worked with many years ago. He had his child clients do what he called the "house, tree and person test" which involved three drawings since children were rarely able to verbalize their relationships, particularly for an old Jewish man with a German accent. The house told about their personal state. A disproportionately large attic space described an over-sized imagination and the size of windows and doors revealed their relative openness or guardedness toward the outside. The tree described their growth and history. I particularly recall him pointing out knot holes drawn in trees. The knot hole symbolized trauma in childhood, even as the loss of a major limb was a trauma in the life of the tree. Certainly, as a woodworker, I am not in the business of story telling on my own. It is a collaboration in which I find a great deal of pleasure. Today, I was passing my hands along the well sanded walnut bench and feeling pleasure in its touch. I do not believe there will be many people who when confronted by the finished bench will not feel the same.

Quite sadly the assumption is made

The assumption is made that human beings are individually conscious and have the individual capacity of free will, and that no other species (plant or animal) has such attributes at the same level. But what we learn through psychology is that human beings are driven in large part by the unconscious mind.

What we learn from those studying the forest, is that trees communicate with each other in a variety of ways, thus displaying behavior akin to human consciousness. These forms of communication are shattered when whole forests are cut. Individual trees may play important roles in community life, just as an individual human may take a leadership role in his or her community.

Taking place slowly through an interchange of chemicals most humans would not equate the forms of communication in the forest between trees as being anything like speech. Nor would they consider such evidence to suggest that trees have human like emotions and feelings or consciousness.

But the line between forest culture (silviculture) and human culture has become blurred. As we study human consciousness (or lack thereof) and forest consciousness (that some might dispute) we find that we are much more like trees than most are willing to assume.

It is truly amazing how closely silviculture resembles human culture.

Man is a symbolic animal in that we use and create metaphors to express things that had been previously inexpressible or inexplicable,  to extend our own range of understanding, and to propose solutions to problems. The house, tree, person test in psychology, in which a child is asked to draw a tree is a way for the psychologist to gain insight into the growth and development of the child. Unlike a child, a tree displays its injuries on the outside, and where the child draws a knot hole, he or she may be describing an injury from the past.

The point, of course, is that we make too many assumptions about life, and about our humanity and our relationship with the rest of creation. In the process, nature is diminished, and students are not seen or understood in their full dimensions.

NPR had an article yesterday that asked, What are the main reasons teachers call it quits? Some might be surprised that money has so little to do with it. But a school is like a forest. When a teacher's roots are allowed to grow deep and become intertwined in fertile soil, good things come forth.

Today in wood shop, my first through 6th grade students will make toys.

Make, fix, create, and encourage others to learn likewise.

fitting back in the everyday scheme of things.

a play tray of parts for making boxes

Having been on vacation at a family reunion in Michigan for one week, and then teaching for 7 days at Marc Adams School of Woodworking, I am home in Arkansas attempting to fit back in the everyday scheme of things. My dreams have been filled with abstractions, as my mind attempts to put pieces back together in precise order. First you take this bus then the next correct bus to connect with the next seems to be the sequence as I reassemble a fresh pattern in my thoughts. I awaken from the struggle thinking, "I know this, and it's easy" and yet when I go back to sleep the struggle resumes, as without getting on each bus and actually arriving at each destination, and then traveling to the next there is no clear resolution of thought.

I have been asked by a child therapist if I will make "sand trays," which are used to help children describe what has happened to them and actual circumstances for which they have no words and no understanding. Just as child psychiatrists used the "house, tree, person test" to get a handle on what's going on in the mind of the child, and what cannot be put effectively in words, the sand tray is used to gain interpretive insight in Jungian psychology. You can read about it here.

While I may or may not find time to make sand trays, I find my own work to be a therapeutic means through which to integrate my conscious and subconscious minds. When I am wrestling in my dreams with concepts that seem to make little sense, I often find that in waking hours, the work of my hands helps my mind make sense of things. For instance, tomorrow I will continue work on my Japanese puzzle boxes and the assembly of concrete parts will reveal my success or failure at recreating a mechanism that works while hidden completely from view. Step-by-step engagement in the process of creating useful beauty helps us to find a secure place in the world while allowing us to be of some significance to others.

There are those who call woodworking "sawdust therapy", and therapy is needed not because there is something wrong with us that marks us as unworthy and that must be fixed, but because in a conflicted world, it gives us the power to set things right, not only for ourselves but for others also.

My own useful variation of a sand tray is shown above. It consists of a cardboard beer flat filled with wooden parts carefully prepared to assemble into Japanese puzzle boxes.

As we look at learning, we must banish the inclination to reside solely in that which can be spoken and/or in that which can be easily measured. Creative work demands the engagement of both the conscious and unconscious minds, and the intersection between the two can be most effectively addressed through visual thinking. Or as Einstein described:

The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be 'voluntarily' reproduced and combined. .... This combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought before there is any connection with logical construction in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to others. ––Albert Einstein in a letter to Jacques Hadamard.

 Make, fix and create...