Master Woodworker earns major award
by Bruce Mason, Gabriola Sounder

    
     Dr. Verne Smith doesn't look at wood like the rest of us. Take arbutus, for example. It grows all around Gabriola and its natural beauty is a source of joy and wonder. But almost everyone else thinks that it's not much good for anything but firewood. "Too unstable," they say.
     To this beholder's eye that's a virtue and with a singular vision and highly skilled hands, Smith creates unique objects of fine art. He has earned one of the most prestigious woodworking awards in this part of the world: the Artistic Merit Award from the Vancouver Island Woodworkers' Guild at their prestigious Explorations in Wood exhibit in the University of Victoria's Maltwood Art Museum & Gallery.

     "I submitted three small tables, each made from arbutus and walnut," he reports, "They were inspired by musical instruments and represent a cello, a baton and a clarinet."
     Part of the sheer genius of the work - recognized by the panel of judges at the exhibition - is that pieces move and change shape with relative humidity.

     Smith got interested in arbutus when his brother chopped down a large tree in Victoria. He had it milled and brought it to Stonesthrow Gallery - which he shares with his wife, well known multi-media artist Karen Cain - in five separate trips.
     Unfinished wood is, for the most part, usually seen heading in the opposite direction, off-island, on large trucks, to return as lumber. Against the grain, Smith might say. He uses cherry, maple, oak and alder from local trees, as well as other West Coast hardwood for much of his raw material.

    "Let me show you my kiln," he suggested to the Sounder during a tour of his large workshop, currently undergoing renovation to accommodate endless drawings of future projects.
     Out back he points to a chest-high structure about 20 feet long. "I designed it myself," he says. "The humidifier I found in a pile at the side of the road just before a big garbage collection. It actually worked and I couldn't believe my luck."
     The kiln is where Smith breathes new life into wood, including arbutus, which he fumes with ammonia to highlight its spectacular grain and colour. Sometimes he combines it with African Padauk because the colour resembles arbutus in the wild. (Smith advises others who want to work with arbutus to seal the ends immediately after cutting a tree. That's where it's most likely to twist.)

     The house, the garden and the lovely B&B at Stonesthrow are filled with fine furniture: one-of-a-kind shrine chests he creates with Cain, a delightful sleigh bed made in two days from 2x6's, hutches and countertops exquisitely dyed by Karen.

     "I've been building since I was a kid," he says. "I remember coming home from school and seeing a large pine board in the basement. 'It's a present. You can make anything you like,' said my father. "I recall constructing carts with wheels and door locks."
     His parents bought a house in Victoria when he was a teenager, with an unfinished second storey. Smith finished the upstairs in discarded mahogany from streetcars. It's a B&B now, a place he and Karen have stayed in, his work, unchanged from the '40s.
     After graduating from medical school at UBC he practiced in Holberg, Bella Bella, Bella Coola, Hazleton and North Vancouver. Since moving to Gabriola, in '94, he's worked at the Medical Clinic, three days a week (Thursday to Saturday).
     Self-taught, he has accumulated tools over the years and says, "I'm getting older and don't have as much time, so I don't do everything by hand. It doesn't make any difference, as long as the results are perfect."

     Sitting in a recently completed teahouse, overlooking a meditation pond, he sums up his life-long relationship with wood. "I let it flow," he says. "I see what it does, what it looks like, how the grain goes and try to envision an object that would agree with it."
     Explorations in Wood is a major, juried exhibition staged every two years, representing a wide range of exceptional woodworking, from small turnings, carvings and sculpture, to musical instruments, furniture and architectural fixtures.
     "I noticed judges shining flashlights inside some of the pieces while I was being interviewed," says Smith. "It's well worth seeing. There's no junk and just to be selected is an honour." Gabriola's Al Brunt and Tony Grove also had work chosen for the exhibit.

Explorations in Wood ran in August 2004   www.maltwood.uvic.ca/ExplorationsinWood

View pictures of the award winning tables and show event

All content and images copyright Verne Smith 2007.