LEW EDMISTER
ABOUT ME
Straight lines make me feel confined. They remind me too much of the "regular world". It's not that I'm a snob or asocial, but I have always considered abstract and free form much more satisfying to my creative psyche. I tried for some years to operate in that other world, but it just didn't work. After I learned to trust in following my own drummer, things became more directed and manageable. This hasn't always been a financial success, but the times of poverty have been offset by creative satisfaction.
I've had umpteen different careers in my life and a few more on my list I haven't gotten around to yet.
I have from my early teens had this compulsion to mess with wood. My first ever project was in shop class in the 7th grade where I made the world's crappiest table lamp from walnut. I proudly presented it to my mother, where it became an ever-present beacon of light until some misfortune befell it. It was all straight lines and angles, but making it did firmly set, in me, an addiction to working with wood. The straight lines soon vanished with the discovery of an abundance of cedar driftwood in the backwater coves of Table Rock Lake. Lamps and tables of various configuration occupied my time while wasting away my high school days, dreaming, drinking beer, chasing girls and getting sawdust on me doing some project or another.
John F. Kennedy, the wonderful 60s, and the impending Army draft to supply expendable bodies for Vietnam shortened my
woodworking for almost a decade. During that time, I learned new skills, went to theater school, got married and got another injection of the wood dope through the generosity of a neighbor, Don Steiner. With Don's guidance, patience and a never-ending supply of Olympia beer, I began to grasp the knowledge of woodworking equipment, material and parsing out many of the different ways you can craft wood. Don had given me a pair of old maple bowls his grandfather had turned on a treadle lathe. They were crusty and a real mess. They're not now. I still have them and still use them daily, 50 years later. There was also a dilapidated quarter-sawn oak rocking chair, which had helped hold up Don's backyard fence.
Those pieces of treasure from Don became the impetus to turn my energies into becoming an antique furniture restorer and finisher. A note of importance at this time is that this was in the 60s. There was no internet, no YouTube videos and only that quaint bastion of knowledge in the library to learn how to do this.
I've gotten along reasonably well by following my abstract, non-straight line instincts and just trying to get better at everything I do every year.
In my mind, boring straight lines are only exceeded in their boredom by symmetry. Symmetry is my next bugaboo. It makes me feel woozy. I think people use symmetry when they can't find a more creative way to solve a design problem. I obviously like organic, natural and a free flow of movement.
I want the people who own any of my pieces to be able to tell me it makes them feel good.
