Welcome to Neoteric Wood Art
What’s It All About?
Turning Thought Into Form
Art. I make art. I make items for other artists. And I write about art. I’m also passionate about reusing, recycling and otherwise repurposing all sorts of materials and relics that people, much to my dismay, discard.
“The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have.” —Vince Lombardi
I have no formal training or education on writing. In school, they tried to teach me the King’s English, unfortunately I have a sort of ‘gag reflex’ when in a classroom. I developed an all consuming visceral hatred of having to go to school, period. Same went for History, Math and classes. It was by the grace of my shop, music, and art classes that I graduated.
So,I have no burning desire to write a book or become the latest and greatest on Substack, I just like to have fun in own bumbling, fumbling way. If you like what you see here, please subscribe, it will help remove the heartbreak of not reading the next story about the fantastic art made by myself, my elegant wife Kathie and the other talented artists in our little community.
The motive force of Neoteric Wood Art is to create elegant and useful items from repurposed material in an efficient and practical way. In a free market way. Examples abound on these pages demonstrating how beautiful works of art can do more than please the eye, art can also serve a new life for old relics as functional items for everyday living.
I would like to invite anyone interested in learning the way to avoid the destructive and wasteful way in which used building materials are carelessly discarded into landfills. I would like to share the ways on how all of us can turn wonderful resource-rich building materials into aesthetically pleasing and useful works of art.
Old or new, discarded materials, such as structural components, old decorative trim and hardware relics, can be given a new purpose to help you grow food, build passive solar rooms and healing enclosures to nourish the soul.
This is a place where information and methodologies can be shared in order to not only enrich our own lives but also reduce the amount of things we throw away and preserve the workmanship and legacy of our past.
There are a multitude of other uses for old wood, wood-framed windows, stained glass, used hinges and sash-locks, door locking mechanisms and more. The older the item, the more likely it is to have unique characteristics that add beauty to whatever you want to build.
This is also a great place to meet other artists. I work closely with those who create art from glass and spend a great deal of time making substrate frames for Glass on Glass mosaic artists. GoG as it is often referred to, involves taking small pieces of stained glass and gluing them to a pane of clear glass, or other substrate, to create astonishingly complex and fantastically beautiful images.
As a lifelong builder and woodworker, I make many things, from my own ideas to clients with bold, new plans. If one can dream it, I can probably create it. I work in other materials as well, but wood and glass is my favorite. I also do a fair amount of restoration of things made with wood, from bird cages to furniture and even some home repair.
I make other woodcraft that is posted throughout these pages. Most of them are off-the-wall projects that may surprise those unfamiliar with my work. Check those out here as well as other pages.
Neoteric, loosely translated, is a combination of two root words; Neo = New, and Teric = Form or Substance. Essentially Neo-Teric means “New-Form“. The tagline for Neoteric is “Turning Thought Into Form” or taking new ideas and bringing them into fruition.
