Education

B.A. Psychology and Philosophy, Clark University 1990

M.A. Expressive Arts Therapy Lesley University,   1994

My Story

My career as an art therapist began in 1994. I believe that a person who is able to express their thoughts and feelings articulately is a happy and a healthy person. The creative arts (art, music, dance drama, etc.) share a common language with the emotions. The theory behind the creative arts therapies is that if a person cannot express something with words they may still be able to express themselves artistically. The underlying assumption being that expressing oneself is moving in the direction of mental and emotional health.

I soon found that I liked the art part of being an art therapist better than I liked the therapist part of being an art therapist. One spring day in 2000 I was walking my dog through my neighborhood like I have done hundreds of times and I walked past the same tree stump I have walked past hundreds of times. Only this time as I walked past that stump I stopped in front of it as an errant thought entered my mind. "That would make a nice coffee table", I thought. I probably would have been startled by that thought if I had thought about the fact that I had never built a piece of furniture in my life, but I didn't do that, I simply went a ahead and built that table.

Thus began my career as a wood artist. I sold that table as soon as I built it and started teaching myself to use all types of tools and reading lots of woodworking books and magazines. I even joined a woodworking club, found several mentors and pestered them with my many questions. I can offer no good explanation as to how this bookish intellectual turned into a hands-on woodworker. All I can say is that I love my new career and I am constantly experimenting with new ways of building things.

Design Philosophy

I subscribe to the ancient design philosophy that form follows function.  I try to let the wood suggest to me what to do by looking at its shape and grain pattern and also seeing what it looks like alongside other pieces of wood. . I have several ways of going about this process.

The first way is when a customer comes to me and wants a new chair, table or other piece. In this case we sit down together and you tell me what you want, I add my ideas to the mix and together we come up with your piece. The second way is when I let my imagination run wild and come up with a design for something that I like and try to coax the wood to do what I want it to do. The third way involves me out in the woods with my chainsaw looking at a fallen log and having it suggest a unique piece of furniture to me. Of course, these three modes are always going on simultaneously and I always reserve the right to contradict myself, but it usually works out with something new and wonderful; and the times when it doesn't work out that way are called learning experiences.

Why Timberfrog?

The frog is a symbol of transformation in many mythologies. On the physical level it begins its life living only in the water as a tadpole and lives its adult life breathing air and able to live on both dry land and in the water. A pretty special creature if you asked me.

Timber is for the wood that I use.

I also like the idea that the word TimberFrog suggests the powerful beauty of the Timber Wolf while making that beauty softer and less threatening in the form of the Timber Frog.