About a year ago, my friend Nolan invited me to Yosemite to do some camping and rock climbing. Reticent about rehashing a forgotten part of my youth–and newly wary of the risks involved, I decided to join him for what he told me was a short, easy climb. The climb itself did turn out to […]
Read more "Wilderness Details"“Oh my god, did you see that?!?” I had spotted a dumpster full of discarded construction trash in the center median of the busy street. We circled the block to look more closely. The dumpster walls rose four feet from the concrete, and contained within them was a treasure trove of construction detritus from a nearby home remodeling. […]
Read more "Humiliation as a precedent for opportunity."A table is a mechanism for preventing your stuff from hitting the ground when you drop it. Gravity is the earth’s own organizational force for keeping your stuff from floating away; tables take advantage of this force by keeping your stuff the right amount of distance away from the ground. A table thus needs to achieve […]
Read more "Make Nice Things! Part Two."Part one: Screw the process. This project began with the famous phrase, “Well that Crate and Barrel table is way too expensive, I’ll be damned if I spend 1500 dollars for some old splintery barn wood mounted to a metal base.” And lo it was begun. The design phase began with my wife and I […]
Read more "Screw the process: Make Nice Things! Part One"Rid yourself of the standards of creating an objet d’art. Instead, make an “object day-art.” I would like to persuade you to make stuff. Persuading you to make stuff begins with thinking about object day-art in the context of stuff in general. We love stuff. We seek it, we cherish it, we love it (Carlin, 1986). […]
Read more "Make things, even crappy things."