Photo by Jeremy Baker

The new line of work has a more immediate inspiration: my wife and partner, Sara. For the first dozen years that we knew each other, Sara and I collaborated on such projects as our house and our children, but we paralleled, not converged, in our work lives. Not that we didn’t take an active part in each other’s endeavors: Sara has long acted as my best critic and design guru -- my best pieces all bear her stamp; and I have built all of Sara’s display booths and offer as much criticism of her pieces as she can stand. I have enjoyed a very fruitful collaboration with another clay artist, Dave Stabley, and a few years ago Sara and I decided to try designing and building furniture together.

Sara’s longtime style of work runs towards curves, flowing lines -- what many would call “organic”: not at all similar to the very rectilinear designs that I had stuck with. Now that we work together, I have learned to bend, too, as the wood takes its cues from the clay. In some cases, such as our Spiral series coffee- and end tables, I chose to retain rectilinearity, but the overall spirit of the pieces flows from the animation of the clay tile. I consider our collaboration the best possible way to create: We sit together to design, go our separate ways to work, then unite our creations at the very end, making a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

www.UnityvilleStudios.com