Todd Likes Crafts

I loved the wood shop class in high school! We were asked to make all the usual stuff, but I always went a little further with my projects. I was not satisfied with the knotty pine we were given to create a notepad and pen holder. I wanted oak. Red Oak. So my dad and I went to the local lumber yard and looked for some red oak. It was beautiful! I was in love. My teacher was excited that I wanted to explore the finer points of woodworking. I was too!

For one assignment we were asked to make a mirror frame. We were likely given some pine boards to do it, and I imagine I said no to that. I wanted mahogany. I learned to love that wood. It is still a favorite.

Rather than a nice square frame, I made a mirror frame that was the logo for REO Speedwagon! But that was not the end. I had also either been taking or had taken a silk screening class and I added the ”REO” to the mirror. Very cool. I gave it to a friend. That was in 1980.

Some years back she and I connected on Facebook and she shared the image below. The mirror is gone and I am not sure what is going on with the scarffy thing, but there it is, 35 years later on her wall.  What a world.

Woodshop was great! I remember being so excited to build a bookshelf! Again, dad took me to the lumber store and I went with some nice mahogany. These two shelves have followed me around now for 41 years.  The image below is from Arizona and on the shelves sit a clock my grandfather used to love and some of my other grandfather’s books. On the wall is yet another story.

I loved ceramics. I loved silversmithing. I loved creating things. Giving them away. Keeping them. That probably explains why I have kept so much of the work my students have done. I watched them craft it. I watched them care for it and deliver the work unto this world. Honoring their effort by keeping a copy just seems right. I have boxes of printed material and I have a gazillion images and writing on the web. You can visit the work they did here.

And this brings me to a couple of points about my work these days and the web.

I like crafting spaces that feel like I wish them to feel, and have the qualities I feel they need to express with my endeavor. It is my art. The work I do by myself and with others. I take it very seriously. Like I’ll buy my own wood if necessary. And in fact, that has gotten me into two places of art.

One was a domain and hosting service I bought in 2008. I was working as an instructional designer and the platform the school “gave” us to represent our efforts was a terrible CMS called Cascade Server, I think. I know what we needed to do to reach our faculty and I wanted to be proud of the work I shared with them and to be proud of the work we asked them to do. I know it sounds silly and simplistic, but I wanted it to look nice.

So I bought the domain and hosted it out of my pocket for over ten years. Even for a few years after I left that school. We won some national recognition because of some of the things we were able to do with it.  It is still there to this day.  It looked pretty nice in the heyday! The image below is from 2014. 

These days I am in the same place. A CMS that does not do what I know the web can do. At this point I can’t even edit the pages I am responsible for. For a short time we did have a nice space that had faculty contributions and some good content. And it looked pretty on any device. But it was taken away. That is yet another story for another day. 

I feel fortunate to have this space to share work I am proud of and in a space that at the very least, you can say in a comment below, “Hey Todd, that is some good work you got there.” Or not. But you do have the option. And that is a step in the right direction. I chose this look. These colors. This space.

For the next piece I will share about creating spaces that you or I feel attached to, I will share some wonderful work a faculty has done to her Canvas homepages. Below is one of them. The images on the homepage are all created from her Playbills she has in her home. Places she has been. Plays she has watched. Parts of her life, right there, in her class.