American Woodman

OK, I've been thinking about this issue for a long time, particularly since I went to a lecture at Bard College almost 10 years ago, given by Julia Butterfly Hill, the famous (some would say infamous) redwood tree-sitter. At the time I was not only using redwood, in spite of its toxicity, but I was using exotic hardwoods from Africa, South America, and Australia, some of which probably came from rain forests that would be better preserved, than cut down for pasture or woodworkers.
I could number out a list of all the top-ten drop-dead gorgeous bowls I have made from ill-gotten wood.... purpleheart, cocobolo, padauk, red mallee, coolibah, zebrawood, just getting started.... and lots of redwood... Was I truly evil? Look- it was easy to justify... doesn't art come first? Isn't using discarded sections of wood (as the wood I crave was exactly the wood that board-makers didn't want, the more complex, impossible-to-work, pieces) somehow a noble use of wood that, heck, the tree had already been cut down, right? Wasn't I preserving for all time the very special spirit of each complex section of an individual tree, its very soul, if you will? Shouldn't my work be applauded? Wasn't my higher use more justified than the lower uses- boards, for example?
Well, I kept on deceiving myself for a good long time and my work was praised by almost all who saw it, with little thought of where it came from and whether the "maker" was being ethical, or not. Gee, there I was on the Martha Stewart Show, with Padauk and zebrawood, and cocobolo, all no doubt somewhat questionable endangered species in a sense, and on the same Show was a fellow espousing preservation and displaying various animals and amphibians who were currently threatened?
He must have hated me.
I began to loath myself. The hypocrisy of it all !! What a crock !! YesYesYes, it's beautiful, it's gorgeous, it's wonderful, it's unique, it's indescribable, it's..... sometimes perfect.
But, it's evil to use exotic foreign woods. Sorry, you friends who supported my work and obtained my work, or sold me blocks of (name a great foreign hardwood- I bought it...).
So I couldn't do it any more. It's not that I suddenly made a decision to become "pure".... I also got tired of getting blocks of great wood that I paid good money for, and then have them check or split and become unusable because they had been badly seasoned or not seasoned at all. And heavy waxing really didn't crack it for me. Hey, isn't there an abundance of fabulous North American hardwoods? Didn't I start OUT with cherrycherrycherry and more cherry, and isn't cherrywood as gorgeous as any other wood in the world? Sure it is.
So is deeply-rayed and complex Western bigleaf maple.
But I admit to being a hypocrite and easy-outter... What really happened is my younger brother shipped me around 42 blocks of bigleaf maple... and at the same time, I had already tried most of the foreign woods, so my curiosity had been largely satisfied. It was easy to quit, and cold turkey, too.
That still leaves the redwood issue. I love Julia Butterfly Hill, even though I only heard her once.
How could anyone not admire to the Nth degree, someone who had devoted so much energy and time to a cause greater than herself? Why did I betray her? Would I continue to betray her in the name of my own art and self-interest? Would I draw a line in the deep soil surrounding the redwood forests and declare "I shall not use redwood..."? Even though redwood is really really toxic (to your lungs, your skin... there is no coincidence that it repells water, and insects, perhaps even fire...) I loved working with redwood.
This past year I bought a redwood burl section, part of which had been in a fire, from a dealer in Oregon. It is one of the most beautiful bowls I have ever made. Definitely a top-ten.
I am a despicable person. But I haven't gotten any more redwood blocks after that one. I did get some locust burl blocks from the same dealer, and they were spectacular, and they were real.
So, I had a brief redwood relapse. But I am pretty well determined to stick to more common North American woods from now on... maple, elm, cherry, heck.... the list is long enough to keep any woodworker gouging and sanding for a lifetime.
There is something basically wrong about shipping wood from other continents when wood from your own continent will do just as well. Not only wrong, but in this day and age (you know, global warming, carbon exchanges, green....) perhaps even evil. I am striving to do less wrong.