My dad had half of the basement and he would like take tables that were my grandmother’s and he would build a reproduction of it. And he would carve duck decoys. And so there was always a lot of paint and tools and stuff around and a lot of chisels.
And he let me work with any of the tools. He never kept me from working with anything. So I had a lot of confidence early on and, as an adult, I love power tools. I mean, my husband and I built our studio. So a lot of that just filtered through to my adulthood because I had no fear of power tools which I found a lot of people do.
They’re afraid they’re going to cut off their hand the first time through, which you could. But I would spend hours down there with him when he was working, finishing tables and I would be in the corner. And he set up a big, I had a big enamel kitchen table that was my workspace and only my stuff went on there.
And he had a scrap box for me. So I would spend a lot of time down there. I just really enjoyed doing that. And I enjoyed just being with my dad because my dad wasn’t a talker, he was a real quiet guy, and so it wasn’t like you’d have a conversation with him so much.
It was just like being with him, doing something with him.