HOW TO PADDLE YOUR OWN BOAT.
"I have a small workshop
here with usually between
10 and 12 students. Two
things are absolutely of
paramount importance to
me. One is the quality of
the work, the other is the
good atmosphere within the
workshop. I select my students
based on these overriding
criteria. This is not about
prior qualifications, it
is not about prior experience,
it is very much about wanting
to make something exceptional,
and wanting to make a modest
living out of it at the
same time. I have spent
most of my life working
out how to use my creative
talent without compromise
and at the same time make
a living, it is this I want
to pass on as much as anything
else; How to paddle your
own boat"
DAVID SAVAGE
YOUR PERSONAL QUALITIES ARE WHAT WE VALUE
One thing I would like to absolutely stress is that you can come here without ever having picked up a chisel or a plane in your whole life. Without even knowing which end of a chisel is the sharp end. It doesn't matter. We will teach you everything from the most basic assumption. At the same time, that shouldn't exclude somebody who has been working in the lumber trade for 20 years but feels they want to improve their skills. We can work with you from a different starting point and this is what we do best in building a personalilsed course.
ALL KINDS OF PEOPLE DO THIS
I have had students who come here with redundancy payments from the coal mining industry and others with 4 year college courses in furniture design. I have had former diplomats and captains of industry. The thing that unites them is an innate intelligence, a will to make something to exceptional quality and the will to make something that perhaps extends their own sense of artistic ability.
IS YOUR CREATIVITY UNDEVELOPED?
The "Arty" side worries some people and it shouldn't do. I am looking for students who feel that the creative is a part of their life that is maybe missing or underdeveloped. In which case we can encourage and enable you to make something beautiful using your hands and eyes and feelings. Certainly the work in the workshops is complementary to the work we do in the art studio. The work we are making for my clients should also, at best, be inspirational or, at least, encouraging. Seeing a curve on a piece of wood and spoke shaving it in the daytime helps no end for somebody looking at a similar curve on a nude life model the same evening. We are using our eyes and our hands synergistically and those open to it can begin to learn how to look, see, and draw, in a relatively short time.
Comments from Former
Student Reed Stanley.
"Hi David, and everyone
else in the school. I'm
just writing to tell you
that the moment I got back
I had job offers llike crazy.
I accepted a job at "Wasatch
Woodwrights Inc". and
I now am making beauitiful
furniture and some cabinetry.
Because of what I was tought
at the [Fine Furniture] School I started
out as the second highest
paid employee, and am loving
my job! I just want to tell
you thanks, David, for all
the skills I learned while
attending your school. They
have made a huge difference
in my job options. I am
also building furniture
on the side my boss lets
me use his whole shop for
my own projects. Thanks
again David, please keep
in touch, I need you to motivate
me into drawing and painting
more.
For those of you who
are thinking about going
to school at David's workshop
I can not say enough good
things about it. It was
the best year of my life
and if I was rich I would
still be there and I guarantee
I'd still be learning the
whole time.
Reed
Stanley
April 2007
P.S.
Please throw something at
Harry for me."
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