Many times the creation of a tool to create a piece is as much a part of the art as the piece itself. Some of these tools represent the .......

 

During my childhood my father spent his spare time working on cars, carpentry, and knife making. He showed me how to “fix things” and how to “use my hands”. In order to accomplish a task, it was important to have the appropriate tool. Since we had little to spend on tools, we would make the tools we needed. The act of making tools provided the opportunity to understand how machines worked. Through knife making and participation with hobbies my father enjoyed, craftsmanship and function were instilled in me. The objects we made needed to function well necessitating good craftsmanship and attention to detail.  

 

The tools that we would make were often made from discarded parts from the factory he worked at. The original functions of those parts were altered to fit our needs. The ingenuity and inventiveness of taking something that exists as a tool of mass production (that was discarded) and re-commissioning it into a tool that would be used for the production of one-of-a-kind creative endeavors was something that I have recently began to analyze and re-consider. This recent teapot was made from left over light fixtures from the assembly line that I worked on during college.