the love, life & work of Blake Johnson
I’ve had the privilege to work with Mitch Ryerson for two summers now, and this was my first project with him in May-July of 2015. This was a huge undertaking, and it took quite a while to work all the pieces into the final thing; many days of beating sun and humidity, no shade on […]
I’ve got this idea for a stepstool, springing from an old idea I drew over the summer, and I’ve brought it back in the past week to figure it all out. The steps and any joinery are mostly just ideas at the moment, as I’ve never bent wood before, and the bends and laminations of […]
Always a fan of experimenting and playing, I took on this project (and this class) as a last-minute thing, and it became a pivotal part of my semester. Funiture Design, taught by Peter Thibault and Judith Hanson, ran alongside the new Furniture Certificate program, a collaboration with the North Bennett Street School, the MassArt portion […]
Well this one’s been a long time coming. Not the greatest, but it’s done. That was all I really wanted out of it anyway. From the timberframe barn a few summers ago I snagged some scrap lumber, milled it down pretty primitively with chainsaw and circular saw into slabs and strips, and came out with […]
I began the semester wondering what I’d make. Last year I made a few interactive pieces, trying to address the intangible connection people can form. From laying on their backs in the dark, simply knowing someone else is there, to tapping on the back of a chair from someone sitting behind you. Not annoying or […]
As a way in to thinking about scale and inventing environments, I built the thing I’d last built, and knew most how to. A miniature timberframe. The fun of it got under my skin in a heartbeat and I was able to zoom through a few weeks, excited about making a fully realistic miniature timberframe […]
The Spring 2013 semester was a hard one for me. I was struggling with the drive to make things with my new-found abilities that didn’t feel like “art” to me. Furniture is furniture, and art critique deals with it as such. Most often, furniture falls into itself, it remains clearly a furnishing, not an object […]
Last semester I tackled wood from as many points of view as possible. I made a wave-shaped bed form using an ArborTech grinder, I made some thin bent kinetic straps, a cradle that rocked diagonally, a creature head from a basswood log, and finally, this chair. I’d been tempting myself toward furniture for some time, […]
So last year I went with MassArt to Virginia to take part in a collaborative project between said school, the Virginia Military Institute, and the Timber Framer’s Guild. And this year we did it again. Most students, more cadets, and more fun. The students designed the structure for a Habitat for Humanity community that was […]
Hey all, been a crazy year. Just now as things are ramping up to reviews and winding down from classes, I thought I’d shoot a bunch of things online that I hadn’t shown off yet. So along with two other posts about major projects, and more of those to come, here are some little things […]
Brownington, VT. The Old Stone House was constructed back in the 1800s by Alexander Twilight, the first black college graduate of the U.S., out of massive stones, to be a schoolhouse for the children of Brownington. A barn used house the students’ animals which they would use for food and money for their schooling, but […]
The Virignia Military Institute conducted a timberframing project near their campus in Virginia, and members of our Sculpture department were lucky enough to participate.
With the SIM Big Show coming up, and submissions being called for, I decided to submit something I’d been meaning to make since early in the semester. I have a penchant for thinking up practical objects using whatever I see, like a tree that’s a lamp, for instance. And that’s what I originally had set […]
Yup, I went to Poland. To help build a timber frame synagogue. A replica of the 1731 place of worship. It was pretty awesome. The Timber Framer’s Guild was commissioned to build this structure, and Handshouse Studio organized a student volunteer opportunity to help with its construction. My group flew into Warsaw, where we stayed […]
Commemorative timber framed covered bridge over a dam This was a post-Poland project (somebody said I’d caught the timber framing bug) at Wason Pond in Chester, New Hampshire. It was a week-long project held by the TFG, and I was able to help out for a good two days on a brief vacation from working […]