Recent work 2015-present
I have been making functional items primarily from hardwood, common items, epoxy resin, and plate glass. My work uses the color and symmetry of pencils, marbles, and dice to make pieces visually interesting. I’m drawn to traditional form and proportion as a background for color and form that contrasts. There is also something attractive to me about the very common objects in our environment that are extremely familiar yet rarely looked at - like #2 yellow pencils.
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Nightstand 24x12x30 h
Case and top Wenge. Drawer fronts live edge Black Walnut with blue epoxy resin. Color and line added to a piece with traditional form. |
Credenza 44x19x 36h
Most of this is made from a single slab of English Elm. The top is two live edge portions joined with black epoxy resin. The drawer fronts are also live edge elm with epoxy. The legs are Jatuba, an African hardwood. 
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Media Console
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Media Console 37x18x36h
Sapelle with Wenge top. Carved epoxy resin inlays. The decoration is carved into the top and drawer fronts and filled with epoxy resin. Motifs inspired buy 1970's women's dress designs.
Sapelle with Wenge top. Carved epoxy resin inlays. The decoration is carved into the top and drawer fronts and filled with epoxy resin. Motifs inspired buy 1970's women's dress designs.
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Burl Nightstand 22x14x30h (Ava Kahn McQueen)
I met Larry Franke while doing carpentry on one of the Provincetown Dune Shacks. Fifty years ago he worked as a sawyer in a California Redwood mill and saved some redwood burl for 50 years. He gave me several and this stand was built around this fabulous piece of wood which was pieced together with the blue epoxy as the top. The rest of the piece is Sapelle, a Mahogany clone and Wenge cross pieces.
I met Larry Franke while doing carpentry on one of the Provincetown Dune Shacks. Fifty years ago he worked as a sawyer in a California Redwood mill and saved some redwood burl for 50 years. He gave me several and this stand was built around this fabulous piece of wood which was pieced together with the blue epoxy as the top. The rest of the piece is Sapelle, a Mahogany clone and Wenge cross pieces.
The burl is cut and assembled with the live edges facing each other.
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Nightstand
22x14x320h (Justin Ambrosino)
This is a companion to the Burl nightstand. Sapelle and Wenge, and pressure gauges for handles because I love the form.
22x14x320h (Justin Ambrosino)
This is a companion to the Burl nightstand. Sapelle and Wenge, and pressure gauges for handles because I love the form.
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End Table
Driftwood End Table
30x14x17h (Judy Goldman & Sheldon Snodgrass)
This table was built around a piece of wood that partially escaped a beach fire and spent a long time at sea being worn smooth and bored into by sea critters. The frame is steel, welded and painted. The pieces sit in blue epoxy suggesting their origin. The shelf is edged with redwood burl from Larry Franke. The top is 5/8” plate glass.
30x14x17h (Judy Goldman & Sheldon Snodgrass)
This table was built around a piece of wood that partially escaped a beach fire and spent a long time at sea being worn smooth and bored into by sea critters. The frame is steel, welded and painted. The pieces sit in blue epoxy suggesting their origin. The shelf is edged with redwood burl from Larry Franke. The top is 5/8” plate glass.
The table is prepared for the epoxy pour.
End table
17” x 12”. Maple and Wenge With orange epoxy resin.
17” x 12”. Maple and Wenge With orange epoxy resin.
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Floor Clock
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Floor Clock 84” tall I often try to use a new technique each time I make a piece. The legs and arms are multiple laminations that were steam bent in a jig and glued together. The arms are “flocked”, that popular 50’s and 60’s craft technique that involves applying a coat of adhesive, then blowing flock on - thousands of tiny particles that adhere and make a solid surface. The legs sit in welded steel shoes with flocked socks. 
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Nightstand
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Nightstand with yellow drawer 16x12x32h Welded steel frame and mahogany drawer. Marbles, pencils, and Ebony drawer handle. |
Nightstand
18” x 12”. Maple top with Wenge accents.
18” x 12”. Maple top with Wenge accents.
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Coffee Table
46x20x16h
Dice and nickel border with #2 pencils. Top is 5/8” plate glass.
46x20x16h
Dice and nickel border with #2 pencils. Top is 5/8” plate glass.
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Coffee Table
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Coffee Table
44x20x17h (Jill Meyers)
This table was made for a friend I spend time at the beach with. The sand is from Truro and hides some childhood keepsakes. Also pressure gauges, pencils, marbles. A serious scrabble player, the inside has antique scrabble letters that spell out in code the date she met her partner.
44x20x17h (Jill Meyers)
This table was made for a friend I spend time at the beach with. The sand is from Truro and hides some childhood keepsakes. Also pressure gauges, pencils, marbles. A serious scrabble player, the inside has antique scrabble letters that spell out in code the date she met her partner.
Coffee Table
Coffee Table 42x20x16h (Peggy Gillespie)
Companion piece for the other scrabble player. Antique scrabble letters spell in code a long birthday message including the message from Taylor Mac “Perfection is for assholes”. Peggy performed with Judy (his preferred pronoun). Includes tape measure, pencils, marbles, wire. Welded and painted steel, Sapelle frame and 5/8”plate glass.
Companion piece for the other scrabble player. Antique scrabble letters spell in code a long birthday message including the message from Taylor Mac “Perfection is for assholes”. Peggy performed with Judy (his preferred pronoun). Includes tape measure, pencils, marbles, wire. Welded and painted steel, Sapelle frame and 5/8”plate glass.
Stone Gate
40x50
Welded and painted steel. Spike detail forged with Oxyacetylene. Center stone from Wellfleet. Antique croquet balls from Ebay
40x50
Welded and painted steel. Spike detail forged with Oxyacetylene. Center stone from Wellfleet. Antique croquet balls from Ebay
Gate design is laid out full scale.
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Drilling parallel holes in a rock using a jig.
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Gate & Fence
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Propeller Gate
38x48 Welded steel. Forged top detail holds a beach stone. Michael Cacergis was a wonderful welder and metal artist in Provincetown. I went to him to make a gate I had designed. He said he didn’t want to make anything from a plan or with a straight line in it and that I should learn to weld. I did learn but went back to him to braise the bronze propeller that sits in the middle of the gate. |
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Coffee table
40" x 20". Welded painted steel frame, sapelle, marbles, plate glass, mahogany, driftwood, epoxy resin and sand. (Weiss / Berman)
This piece was made for a dear friend with a piece of driftwood and sand from his favorite place in the world, Long Nook beach.
This tree, maybe a maple or an Oak, grew for many years on a high bank of the Penobscot River in Maine. Most driftwood enters rivers when winter storms accelerate erosion and strong winds topple trees. And so this tree, its roots undermined by erosion and the wind slowly pressing it over, finally succumbed and it headed down the Penobscot and into the Atlantic. By the end of the first day a rough sea had stripped its leaves and beaten off all its small branches.
The current carried it south along the coast and the tides washed it repeatedly onto the rocky shoreline and then snatched it back out again. By the middle of winter it had lost all its bark and its remaining branches were mere nubs that looked like big smooth thumbs. In March it floated near Boothbay harbor and was trapped in rocks on the North side of Squirrel island.
For months it was bashed and bruised in the rocks, almost abraded into three pieces. By now it had its first passengers, a dozen Shipworms whose larva was slowing growing inside tiny holes drilled by the females. In late June a full moon brought a very high tide and a storm sent 8 foot waves crashing against the island. The tree, now a log, was freed to set out again.
The fungi that rot wood require oxygen to metabolize wood. By now every bit of the log was saturated with salt water that displaced the oxygen and the log was well preserved, protected from rot but not the ocean and the sun. By Fall the log made it 110 miles south to the Boston Shipping lanes in Stellwagen Bank. It was here at 2 AM the Trawler “Risky Business” out of Provincetown struck the log and broke it into three pieces.
For the next year and a half the whereabouts of the log, now three logs, was unknown. But the next Fall an early Nor’easter returned one piece of the log and drove it into Cape Cod Bay. It floated South with the flood tide and north with the ebb tide almost making it into the Canal on one Southern foray. By now the Shipworms had thoroughly colonized the log and were joined by sea roaches, another borer. The surface of the log was polished smooth and the color of ashes. Hundreds of holes covered its surface.
In late September, or maybe early October, the log washed up on Corn Hill beach on the Bay side in Truro. Truro is a small Cape town unknown to most off cape and shadowed by its famous neighbor, Provincetown. The log sat on the wrackline below a small dune covered in Eel grass next to the breakwater.
On Saturday a family and two friends trudged down the beach with chairs, coolers and armloads of firewood. They got the last fire permit and had to walk down almost to the breakwater. They were happy to see a long log at the head of the beach and quickly set at it with a small axe. It produced 4 pieces and once on the fire produced green flames and the colors of the ocean’s salty chemistry. But the wood turned out to be too wet to burn well and they pulled it off the fire and left it on the beach.
The next high tide returned one of the logs to the Bay and sent it north through the rip at Race Point and down the “backside”. After weeks or months it landed on a beach that Conde Nast once listed as one of the ten most beautiful beaches in the world. But if you spent any time on that beach you would know that it is actually the most beautiful beach in the world. It is Long Nook beach.
And I walked down Long Nook beach on a sunny June day and there was the log. I could tell it had spent a long time at sea. It smelled of salt and fire and I could hear sea gulls in it. The fire had left its mid section with a graceful curve, and the wood was fissured and blocked like the bottom of a dried out lake bed with the color of coal. It had tiny holes all about and the grey ends of polished bleached wood contrasted with the black center.
I picked it up, and rolled it carefully in my hands. And it told me this story.
40" x 20". Welded painted steel frame, sapelle, marbles, plate glass, mahogany, driftwood, epoxy resin and sand. (Weiss / Berman)
This piece was made for a dear friend with a piece of driftwood and sand from his favorite place in the world, Long Nook beach.
This tree, maybe a maple or an Oak, grew for many years on a high bank of the Penobscot River in Maine. Most driftwood enters rivers when winter storms accelerate erosion and strong winds topple trees. And so this tree, its roots undermined by erosion and the wind slowly pressing it over, finally succumbed and it headed down the Penobscot and into the Atlantic. By the end of the first day a rough sea had stripped its leaves and beaten off all its small branches.
The current carried it south along the coast and the tides washed it repeatedly onto the rocky shoreline and then snatched it back out again. By the middle of winter it had lost all its bark and its remaining branches were mere nubs that looked like big smooth thumbs. In March it floated near Boothbay harbor and was trapped in rocks on the North side of Squirrel island.
For months it was bashed and bruised in the rocks, almost abraded into three pieces. By now it had its first passengers, a dozen Shipworms whose larva was slowing growing inside tiny holes drilled by the females. In late June a full moon brought a very high tide and a storm sent 8 foot waves crashing against the island. The tree, now a log, was freed to set out again.
The fungi that rot wood require oxygen to metabolize wood. By now every bit of the log was saturated with salt water that displaced the oxygen and the log was well preserved, protected from rot but not the ocean and the sun. By Fall the log made it 110 miles south to the Boston Shipping lanes in Stellwagen Bank. It was here at 2 AM the Trawler “Risky Business” out of Provincetown struck the log and broke it into three pieces.
For the next year and a half the whereabouts of the log, now three logs, was unknown. But the next Fall an early Nor’easter returned one piece of the log and drove it into Cape Cod Bay. It floated South with the flood tide and north with the ebb tide almost making it into the Canal on one Southern foray. By now the Shipworms had thoroughly colonized the log and were joined by sea roaches, another borer. The surface of the log was polished smooth and the color of ashes. Hundreds of holes covered its surface.
In late September, or maybe early October, the log washed up on Corn Hill beach on the Bay side in Truro. Truro is a small Cape town unknown to most off cape and shadowed by its famous neighbor, Provincetown. The log sat on the wrackline below a small dune covered in Eel grass next to the breakwater.
On Saturday a family and two friends trudged down the beach with chairs, coolers and armloads of firewood. They got the last fire permit and had to walk down almost to the breakwater. They were happy to see a long log at the head of the beach and quickly set at it with a small axe. It produced 4 pieces and once on the fire produced green flames and the colors of the ocean’s salty chemistry. But the wood turned out to be too wet to burn well and they pulled it off the fire and left it on the beach.
The next high tide returned one of the logs to the Bay and sent it north through the rip at Race Point and down the “backside”. After weeks or months it landed on a beach that Conde Nast once listed as one of the ten most beautiful beaches in the world. But if you spent any time on that beach you would know that it is actually the most beautiful beach in the world. It is Long Nook beach.
And I walked down Long Nook beach on a sunny June day and there was the log. I could tell it had spent a long time at sea. It smelled of salt and fire and I could hear sea gulls in it. The fire had left its mid section with a graceful curve, and the wood was fissured and blocked like the bottom of a dried out lake bed with the color of coal. It had tiny holes all about and the grey ends of polished bleached wood contrasted with the black center.
I picked it up, and rolled it carefully in my hands. And it told me this story.
Coffee Table
38x18x16h Lots of pencils, coated wire. Welded steel frame, 5/8” plate glass. |
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1st Pencil Table
1st Pencil Table
38x20x16h
Welded steel frame. Sappele border. 5/8” plate glass.
38x20x16h
Welded steel frame. Sappele border. 5/8” plate glass.
Fail Sculpture
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Fail Sculpture 120” x12”
Alan Tower is a sound artist in California who builds and plays many exotic instruments. He asked me to weld Beryllium Copper rods to a bronze base that would sit on a resonating chamber. The listener lies with their head in the chamber and the musician plays the rods with a cello bow. He shipped the parts to me and flew out to my shop to supervise. The challenge was to raise the temperature of the whole bronze base evenly to 1200 degrees to melt a special high temp solder without warping it. After 3 days of effort I did not succeed. The base warped. He left me the project and suggested that I do something with it. Here it is.
Alan Tower is a sound artist in California who builds and plays many exotic instruments. He asked me to weld Beryllium Copper rods to a bronze base that would sit on a resonating chamber. The listener lies with their head in the chamber and the musician plays the rods with a cello bow. He shipped the parts to me and flew out to my shop to supervise. The challenge was to raise the temperature of the whole bronze base evenly to 1200 degrees to melt a special high temp solder without warping it. After 3 days of effort I did not succeed. The base warped. He left me the project and suggested that I do something with it. Here it is.
Totem
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Totem
16’ tall
Made from a 12” wide pine log cut into three pieces and dried for 2 years. Pencils, 1” polyethylene tubing, marbles, copper tubing, pressure gauges and deer. This was a transitional piece from the things I had been making in the woods with logs.
16’ tall
Made from a 12” wide pine log cut into three pieces and dried for 2 years. Pencils, 1” polyethylene tubing, marbles, copper tubing, pressure gauges and deer. This was a transitional piece from the things I had been making in the woods with logs.
Live Edge River Table
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River Table
48x22x18
Live edge Black Walnut with blue epoxy resin. Steel legs and Sappele feet.
I was knocked out the first time I saw a River Table. So were a thousand other woodworkers and over the last few years I think the genre has been done in by over exposure. Now it takes a really spectacular piece of wood to make something that stands out. High end slabs are well over $10,000.
48x22x18
Live edge Black Walnut with blue epoxy resin. Steel legs and Sappele feet.
I was knocked out the first time I saw a River Table. So were a thousand other woodworkers and over the last few years I think the genre has been done in by over exposure. Now it takes a really spectacular piece of wood to make something that stands out. High end slabs are well over $10,000.
Coffee table
42" x 20". Welded steel, Sapelle, nickels, dice, pencils
42" x 20". Welded steel, Sapelle, nickels, dice, pencils
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Mirror
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Wall Mirror 34x20 (Jill Meyers)
Sapelle frame. Half sphere maple, dice, Ebony column detail. My first attempt at relief carving. Very slow but satisfying. 
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Bed
Sapelle Queen bed with wenge accents. Made with matching dining table and coffee table. The small spheres are glass marbles and the half spheres on the headboard are hardwood attached with earth magnets.
Sapelle Queen bed with wenge accents. Made with matching dining table and coffee table. The small spheres are glass marbles and the half spheres on the headboard are hardwood attached with earth magnets.
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Outdoor patio table.
36 x 18. Sapelle And purple heart wood. Eight coats of marine varnish.
36 x 18. Sapelle And purple heart wood. Eight coats of marine varnish.
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Red Line in the Woods
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Summer view 76 feet x 1 inch Another piece inspired by years of working in the woods with trees and cables |
ART
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12” wide x 13’ long A lot of the things I find visually interesting are random. I found this long piece of brown packing paper that had a certain beauty in my view. I stuck it on the wall and let it trail across the floor. People kept asking “What is that, is it art?”. So that they would know for sure it was art I put an end of it in a frame that says: “It must be, it’s in a frame”, question answered. |
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Collage 66”x36”
Oil spray paint on cardboard.
When I weld something I always paint it and use cardboard to catch the spray. I found the random patterns on the cardboard interesting. As I was assembling pieces together the dark colors (I use grey primer and black finish) reminded me of the fire that burned all of my shop and some of my house, to which I never returned after 43 years. After I finished 2 of the three panels I set them briefly on fire to make the connection clear.
Oil spray paint on cardboard.
When I weld something I always paint it and use cardboard to catch the spray. I found the random patterns on the cardboard interesting. As I was assembling pieces together the dark colors (I use grey primer and black finish) reminded me of the fire that burned all of my shop and some of my house, to which I never returned after 43 years. After I finished 2 of the three panels I set them briefly on fire to make the connection clear.
My poor motorcycle that carried me all over the US and Canada for 10 years. Lost in the fire.
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The remains of my shop
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Tracks
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I think that people who produce objects for many years appreciate art that is all about concept and not and enduring object. For years I have made mile-long line drawings on beaches and runes and in winter left various shapes in the snow from footprints. All ended with a rising tide or a warm day.