A Different Drummer: My sand-castle legacy of creativity

I’m a creative guy. I’m not bragging, just sayin’. I’ve been inventing things all my life, yet I have little to show for it. My creative cupboard is nearly bare.
As a wee boy, I was artistic. I drew a lot. I sketched everything around me, dogs, cats, trees. I also wrote limericks and poetry, and dabbled with water colors. Those drawings and verses are gone for good.
I took Art I, II, and III in high school, making paintings, jewelry, pottery, and carvings. They’re gone. I had no reason to keep them. They were mostly crap.
After graduation I bought myself some quill pens and a dozen different tips, India ink, and a hardback book of blank canvases. Those flowing pen tips inspired dozens of sketches. I filled the book up over the next few years with morphing characters, cartoon strips, and surrealism. I still have that little red book. It’s one of the few items in my creative cupboard. It’s called Hot Soup.
Later while in college, I had no art classes, so I bought oil paints, canvas, and began colorizing some of my quill sketches. I kept doing that for the rest of my painting life. Whenever I felt like twirling the oils, I’d find something in my childhood sketchbook, and turn it into something else.
Today I have a dozen paintings that spanned and represent those times in my life, but they are not on display. They seldom see the light of day. They stay tucked safely away, deep in the back of the closet, too odd and disturbing to look at every day, hanging on the living room walls. They’re the sort of paintings you want to look at, then look away.
I did paint some broccoli and mushrooms that hang in the kitchen.
I’ve written 800 words a week for 34 years. They reside on my hard drive, in a space smaller than my thumb. My columns are like sand castles. They’re written, they run, then they’re gone. Gallons of creative juice goes into them, and they are fun to write, but once they run, they run away. Unlike pillows, I cannot prop myself up on my previous writings.
Woodworking has changed all that. It has broken my curse. When I build tangible, material objects, I get to keep them, look at them, sit on them, eat off them. It’s a fantastic feeling, and I’m truly enjoying this trip to the woods.
So far I have built three coffee tables and six end tables. One set is in my living room, one set is in our cabin, and one set is in our kids’ living room. My creations are living useful long-term lives right out there in the open where I can see them. They greet me wherever I go.
Until now I have written or drawn everything I’ve ever created. I didn’t push to publish or sell to galleries, so that stuff’s all boxed away.
Man Ray liked to say that true art should be useless. Art is art, and nothing else. He glued nails onto the bottom of a clothes iron and became the rave of Paris. I respect that interpretation. Alas, my useless paintings and columns have gone to the shadows.
My coffee tables, however, hold sandwiches, wine goblets, remote controls, and magazines, and are the center of attention when the family throws a party or sits down for a night of television.
Today I began building a large redwood slab outdoor love seat for our cabin’s backyard. It will be built sturdy, strong, and stable, able to withstand sun, cold, elephants, parties, and snow all year around. It will have heft.
I stopped at the crowded yard of Urban Wood Rescue in Sacramento the other day and got a tour from Bethany, one of the volunteers for this non-profit organization. As she explained it, “Whenever someone in Sacramento cuts down a tree, they bring it here.”
All their wood was sorted and labeled by type. They had full logs and slabs of several hard and soft wood varieties. Bethany carried a tape measure, a calculator, and a Wagner moisture meter. She could quickly measure board feet and give me a price on any slab I pointed to. Then she’d do a moisture reading so I’d know if more dry time was needed.
I bought six pieces for $170. I got a long beam of white ash and two beams of redwood, plus three slabs in redwood, acacia, and sycamore.
They are laid out in my yard. All the redwood will go into my loveseat. I’m not looking at any blueprints. I could probably save myself time and trouble by copying a tried-and-true design, but I don’t want that. I want to build it piece by piece with common sense and a few saws.
First I am building a mockup loveseat using cheap 2x4s from Home Depot until I get the simplicity of design I want. It must be easy to dismantle and transport. Once I’ve measured twice, I’ll be ready to cut up my precious beams to build my seat of love.
I want three things out of this project. There can be no waste. The chair must be sexy. It must outlive me.