How it all started

Making things with my hands was not something I came to appreciate until later in my life. I grew up in a creative home. Music was one of the main passions of our family. I discovered my talents as a musician at an early age and naturally grew in skill and appreciation under the influence of two very talented parents, both of whom worked professionally in the music industry.

My college major seemed destined to be something with music. And so it was. I studied Vocal Performance at Oklahoma City University and made strides toward a career as a singer and actor. Naturally, I set my sights on NYC. So after college, my wife and I packed our bags and headed there to make careers in the arts.

But a desire always ran through me to make something. Something I could see, feel and touch. In our early years of marriage, I would tell my wife how I wanted a garage, a space, somewhere where I could make something. I think the idea of the “intangible” creativity I’d been so focused on with music and the performing arts felt too temporal. After every gig, I’d add a line to my resume and charge off to the next audition. The” tangible,” or manual arts, were slowly beckoning me towards something different. And after seeing the disturbing amount of throw away furniture in NYC alone, I knew I had to try my hand at making something lasting, something useful, something with beauty. Furniture making began to take shape.

Babies and back to school!

Our first son was born in, looking back now, a time that would be the pivot from a career in acting to a new path in furniture making. He had started to become mobile and we needed to protect his curious crawling capers from the steam heat radiators. That was ground zero for me. My first piece of furniture was a radiator cover. (If you’ve ever lived in the northeast…you know. Gotta have those radiator covers.) One thing led to another and I wound up starting a little business making more radiator covers for lots of NYC families going through that same transition from babies to crawlers. I tried to make my radiator covers nicer, more furniture-esque. But you can only dress them up so much. I wanted to push into finer design.

Eventually, 3 more kids later, I signed up to go to a reputable furniture school in Maine, Center for Furniture Craftsmanship. The 3-month intensive was the best experience for me as a budding maker and designer. After completing the course, I immediately tackled more refined, more challenging designs - dining tables, display cabinets, mirrors, and the list grew as did my enjoyment and reputation as a millworker and fine furniture maker in my shared South Bronx wood shop.

Leaving the Big City for the Motherland

Just a few short years later, our now family of 6 found the motherland of Oklahoma beckoning us. It was time to move closer to my parents and a door opened for the birth of a workshop for community professionals, a makerspace, and teaching space. The timing could not have been more perfect. Our boys were just arriving at the age where they could really benefit from the opportunity of access and were interested in honing their own skills and interests in woodworking. Now on any given day you’ll find them fashioning treasure boxes, spinning a candlestick holder on the lathe, filling an order of dominos, or creating the next never-seen-before lego lifter. Their excitement for the craft is a joy to watch. (Homeschooling definitely has its benefits.)

My wife and I continue to take steps as we can to build this place we call Kinvene…a little community in the middle of downtown OKC of professional woodworkers, makers of all things wonderful, and classes that will inspire, challenge and delight. Our hope is that you join us…kinvene if you will….and find yourself getting in on the fun. We all may not get to be makers for a living but it doesn’t mean we weren’t all meant to create or enjoy the process of creating!