Art of the matter

Woodworking is an art, so it’s only fitting to surround myself in my woodshop with more art – in a manner of speaking.

My shop is large and although I have a lot of cabinets and shelves, there’s still plenty of wall space that I fill up with things I like. You may call it something else, but I consider it art. Being a woodshop, as you might expect I have several framed woodworking magazine covers, project drawings and the like. But I’m a big fan of pop culture and memorabilia, so there’s lots of non-woodworking art, too. Here’s a small sampling.

Among the items are a framed copy of the front page of the Daily Planet (with a personal letter from editor Perry White), a photo of my great, great grandfather Major James Nation in a 19th-century wood frame, a print of Calvin and Hobbes plotting to steal Dad’s tools, my beloved rubber chicken, and a very old clock that once hung in my parents’ shop several decades ago.

You may quibble with my description of all this stuff as “art,” but all these things have connections to my life, from profound memories of my parents like that old clock, to simple fun stuff like enjoying Superman and The Three Stooges. There’s no question that spending time working in my woodshop grounds me, and so do all these memories – which, unless I’m mistaken, is the entire purpose of art in the first place.