Joel: Leanne, how are you doing?

Leanne: Good.

Joel: Thanks for coming up to answer these grilling questions.

Leanne: Yeah, I'm excited.

Joel: So tell us, tell me what your professional or educational background was before you joined the fine furniture program.

Leanne: Yeah, before this I did architectural drafting for about three years, and that was like, super fun. Lots of design, and it was cool until it was really boring sitting for 8 hours a day. And so I came out here to do the furniture program.

Joel: Out here to Victoria?

Leanne: To Victoria? Yes. And I was in the lower mainland before.

Joel: So you moved to Victoria specifically for this program?

Leanne: I did.

Joel: Interesting. There was no other programs like it that you could find on the mainland?

Leanne: There was one in Nelson. Selkirk College has a Woodworking program. But this was more like island vibes. I kind of wanted to come out here, go to the small town, and slow down a bit and see how that went.

Joel: And you actually were a student in the 2019 class, right? Which was the COVID class.

Leanne: Yeah, the COVID class.

Joel: So what happened? Your school experience ended right before the Capstone project began?

Leanne: Yeah, sort of. We did design our final projects, but we finished the whole second semester online, so we didn't get to build, or design-it build-it. It was just more of like a design it and don't build it. Yeah, and then we kind of were like, okay, are we going to be able to come back or not? And then I think by mid-April, it was kind of like, yeah, that's it, we kind of got to shut her down.

Joel: How did that feel, having to shut down right before you started making your chair?

Leanne: Yeah, it was such a bummer. I was like, really bummed. A lot of people were, and I mean, so many people missed out on things that year, but for me, I took the program really excited about coming out the end. Saying that I built a chair, I don't know, seems like a big feat for me, not having a lot of tooling experience and stuff like that. So, yeah, I was kind of sad.

Joel: And how did you swing it so you could rejoin the program for the chair portion?

Leanne: Yeah, a few of the previous students have already, and yeah, it was kind of open to us. Like, if you want to come back and a spot is available and it works with your schedule, then fit it in.

Joel: And you were able to do that?

Leanne: I was, yeah. My workplace that I was at for the time between leaving the furniture program and coming back shut down in March. So it was like, kind of perfect timing.

Joel: Were you artistic before you joined this program?

Leanne: Yeah, art was like my thing, like drawing and painting and still definitely is. So yeah, I don't know, I was excited to apply that into furniture, and just like a new avenue.

Joel: Why did you choose wood? Why not metal or ceramics or some other medium of furthering your skills?

Leanne: I did do ceramics for a time, and it was actually more to build my portfolio for this program. But I kind of fell in love with that too. I feel like I have this problem of falling in love with anything that I do with my hands. But yeah, I don't know. Wood has a lot of opportunity in multidisciplinary art, I guess, if that's the right word. I can make my own frames for paintings and do some really crazy stuff to incorporate into painting and drawing, and that kind of drew me to it.

Joel: Great.

Leanne: Yeah.

Joel: What kind of friendships have you made in the program? Either this year or 2019 or both?

Leanne: Yeah, I mean, coming in this year, I was, like, a little nervous being odd man out, but everybody was super welcoming, and I found the same kind of feeling as with my program or my year of the program, that everybody's there to help figure it out together. And I just think that's so cool. We can all bring our opinions to it. And I feel like you just come up with such more rich of a product when you have all these other insights. But even from the first year, my best friend here is from the program, and my partner is from the program.

Joel: You met your partner in the program?

Leanne: Yeah, I know. I didn't come looking for that, but it found me.

Joel: Are there any significant differences that you felt between this class or this year's program and the previous experience you had?

Leanne: That's a good question. I don't know. I wouldn't even say, like, significant differences. It feels pretty similar, aside from the fact that I got a lot more time with those people and really built those relationships. But, yeah, it feels pretty like what it was.

Joel: What has been your best experience so far, either this year or in 2019? And experience can be anything. It can be a project, a reading, a class, whatever you think.

Leanne: Yeah, well, I would almost say experience wise, just feeling that going through the process of making mistakes and fixing mistakes and experiencing that. My level of freak out when something bad happens has really lessened. And I think that experience has really helped me all over and everything. It's just things can be fixed, and often that's a big part of what we do.

Joel: Describe that feeling, if you would, of making a mistake when you've been laboring over a piece of wood for hours or days or even weeks, what does that feel like?

Leanne: Oh, man, it's like disheartening for sure. I remember the first really big mistake I made was my year, 2019. We do a document box and a little bit different from the project this year, but all four corners have a different type of joinery, and so you take so much time to do each corner perfectly and that they all work together. And the glue up came, and I don't know what happened, but my clamp pads were wrong or something, and there was just huge gaps and it was already setting, and I was like, oh, my gosh, this is it. On the verge of tears. There probably was a few that I padded away, but Sandra jumped in right away and just steamed it apart and fixed it within, like, 15 minutes. And I was like, okay, she can do that. I can do that.

Joel: She steamed apart PVA glue?

Leanne: Honestly, it must have been a water soluble, yeah, because it came apart.

Joel: Wow.

Leanne: Yeah.

Joel: Has that feeling of being able to overcome and compensate for and prevail over your mistakes, has that carried over to any other aspects of your life?

Leanne: Yeah, I think so. Like, not taking things out of my control so seriously, and not stressing about that? Of course I do still. There are lots of things that I'm thinking about daily, waking up in the middle of the night worrying about, but I just think I have a better what's the word? Like, grounding reminder that if it's out of my control, it's not the end of the world.

Joel: Have your friends or loved ones noticed that change in your approach or personality maybe?

Leanne: Maybe, I don't know. I have to ask them.

Joel: They haven't said anything?

Leanne: No, not that I not that I've received well. Actually, you know what? My friend from the year I was here, she did say something the other day. She was like, you've been through so much problem solving, and even in my previous job that it's made me able to approach these situations better. So I was like, hey, I didn't even think about it that way.

Joel: That's great.

Leanne: She kind of brought it up.

Joel: What, again, in either year, was your most challenging, frustrating experience?

Leanne: I think I had a lot of anxiety around using big, crazy looking machines and the fear.

Joel: They are very dangerous.

Leanne: Yeah. And I think the fear of that has been challenging for me. There are times when I know I need to do something, some type of cut, and the way I'm doing is maybe the first time, or I don't feel as confident going up to the machine and just getting on it. And so I will stall and I'll just wait, and then I'll maybe talk to Sandra a few times and then I'll get there. But that's kind of frustrating. I wish I was a little bit more bold in that sense, but I guess that'll also come in time.

Joel: Do you have any woodworkers in your family?

Leanne: My dad a little bit, but not… He really started, actually when I came back, he got back into it because he's retired now.

Joel: Does he live in Victoria?

Leanne: No, my parents live on the mainland in Chilliwack. So when I came to the program, it was almost like he was relit because it was something that he did when he was younger, and he invested in a bunch of tools and set up the garage, and I was like, I wish you lived here, dad.

Joel: Have you guys made some stuff together since then?

Leanne: No, but we kind of go back and forth on projects. Like, he wants to make me something for my birthday, and everything that I make I tend to give to my parents. So yeah, if we were living in the same city, I think we would be doing stuff like that.

Joel: How does that feel to have discovered a new aspect of your relationship with your father because of this class?

Leanne: Good. Yeah, definitely good. Me and my dad are very close to begin with, so it's just fun that we have a lot of things that are like-minded, I guess.

Joel: So is he excited to see your chair?

Leanne: Yeah, I hope so. I'm sending him pictures almost every day.

Joel: Going to come to the gallery show?

Leanne: Yeah. They're both going to come to town.

Joel: For opening night?

Leanne: Yeah.

Joel: They're going to get all dressed up?

Leanne: I hope so. Bob and Janine, they'll be here.

Joel: My dad's name is Bob.

Leanne: Amazing. My brother's name is Joel.

Joel: There you go. We have a common ancestor somewhere down the line. What part of the curriculum affected you the most, either positively or negatively?

Leanne: Let's see. I think jig building is a big one. Just realizing how much work goes into producing something that you've used to produce parts. I think that to me was very interesting. And learning to use that in my job after kind of finishing the program the first time, that really impacted me, knowing, like, okay, if I can't do this initially, there's something that I can figure out, that we'll be able to do it better, and that those things are always improved upon too. It's like yeah, kind of impactful for me.

Joel: Was there a part of the curriculum, maybe back in 2019, that just drove you crazy? Like, you couldn't put your finger on it. You spent way too much time on it. Any part you found particularly challenging?

Leanne: Sanding and finishing. It's not really my - I'm a patient person, but for some reason, I just lose it there, so yeah, I find that difficult. But thankfully my partner did very well in the finishing, and so I farm it out to him.

Joel: So he does all your finishing?

Leanne: Yeah, typically.

Joel: Does that mean you do all his building?

Leanne: Yeah. When we make our vases together, we make little wooden vases. I typically do most of the cutting and the joinery, and he'll take it and do the finishing after that.

Joel: Is this a business you have?

Leanne: Sort of, yeah. We've been doing little markets around the city.

Joel: You make wooden vases?

Leanne: Yeah, little arched wooden vases. They're kind of evocative of my chair design and shape, like, arches and stuff seem to really interest me for some reason.

Joel: And why did you and your partner choose vases?

Leanne: I think the year that I was here I kind of like made a prototype out of a chunk of an offcut that I had and I was like, this is something that is relatively simple, I can use off cuts that would probably be firewood anyway. And so we just had lots of offcuts from our different workplaces working in the industry and so we just started taking them and kind of ran with it and I did some designs and.

Joel: How do people at the farmers markets receive them?

Leanne: Well, yeah, they almost sell out every time. Maybe not the best profitability because we're still figuring out the kinks and the time it makes, but it was a little bit more of a passion project than a money maker.

Joel: That's lovely.

Leanne: Yeah.

Joel: I assume you all, in 2019 you did the form and function assignment. So what do form and function mean to you? Has our class, did your class change how you feel about or how you think about those concepts?

Leanne: Yeah, I think I've always loved form being kind of from an artistic and design background, like making things look beautiful and curating spaces in a way that they look nice is just really enjoyable for me. And then the function part of it coming from the drafting side of things, it's like if you don't have a functional plan in your house or something in your living space, then you're going to notice really quickly. So I don't know, maybe not changed but just deepen my understanding of form and function and just how everything kind of touches that that we touch in world. So yeah, that makes sense.

Joel: Has the program changed how you feel about arts, trade, craft? You came into this, I would imagine, with one perception of the world of woodworking. Is your perception now different?

Leanne: Yeah, in the way that I don't know if you can ever really truly be a woodworker and that's like what you're just doing all day. There's so much behind actually doing that maybe as a career that I didn't expect, like, just all the back end, the marketing, the business side of things. And I think that's kind of a bit of a bummer as well. Of course I'd love to be doing being a maker and it's just a little disheartening thinking like I'm not really geared towards the business stuff and it's not something that entices me.

Joel: Why aren't you geared towards it?

Leanne: I'm a pretty slow liver. I like rest. I think work is really important but I think rest is equally as important and I just don't do well on a high stress, long hour kind of schedule. Yeah.

Joel: What do you do when you're at rest?

Leanne: Oh man. Meditation, prayer, that type of stuff. I'm a spiritual person, grew up in a very religious household and stuff, and so that's a really big part of my existence. A lot of drawing and painting, too, and I guess that, to me, is a little bit spiritual as well.

Joel: What kind of drawings? What kind of paintings? Is it landscapes? Are they people?

Leanne: Yeah, sometimes, like, still life kind of like abstract stuff, but abstract in, like, human form. So, like, body parts that are kind of painted together. Weird. I don't know. Maybe surreal might be, like, a bit of a category you could put it in. I think there's, like, a goal that I have to have a painting series, is kind of my next goal, and I have a lot of ideas of what I want that to be, but I'm not quite sure how it's going to translate visually.

Joel: What medium? Wood or watercolor? Excuse me, oil or water?

Leanne: Yeah. Actually, I paint in watercolor and acrylic. Acrylic on wood panel, though. And I think that might be the direction I want to go with that. Yeah.

Joel: What are you going to paint?

Leanne: I don't know. I like the idea of kind of revamping religious art and looking at it in a different way and maybe expanding on ideas that are kind of buried in texts that we don't really understand.

Joel: Can you give me an example?

Leanne: Yeah, so biblical literature, for example, is very difficult to understand, taking it from, like, a culture and a time that's so long ago and so foreign to us. There's just so much that I have learned in digging into that literature and learning about the language and how things were culturally just so different than how we look at it. So there's a lot you don't pick up on and, like, really deep, profound kind of commentary on the human condition, which is really deep. But yeah, I want to try and bring those ideas out and artistically portray them.

Joel: Sounds amazing.

Leanne: Yeah, I hope so. If I can pull it off, it might take a while.

Joel: I'd love to see it when you do.

Leanne: Yeah, one day.

Joel: How do you define art?

Leanne: Well, man, how do you define art? That's a tough question to answer. Art is kind of everything around us, in a way, I guess not everybody creates things to create art, but if I'm creating something, I'm creating art. I don't know if that's really a definition, but yeah.

Joel: William Morris defines art as the pleasure people take in their work. What do you think of that definition?

Leanne: Yeah. Okay. That's a good way to run with it, because work, you don't really think about art and work together. But for vocation and things, I feel like I was made to make things and create things, and I guess that is also work. I think that's a really big part of it. And if that's pleasurable also, I think that's a really big positive or benefit, to have pleasure in your work.

Joel: Do you think art is affected by the economy we live in, the politics of the moment?

Leanne: Yeah. Probably.

Joel: How so?

Leanne: I think that I mean, everything's kind of affected by everything in a way, which is like a kind of a lame way to put it, but yeah, like, I don't know. Historically, you can look back and art kind of comments on what's happening in the world. So good art, I think, can kind of comment on those things and make you realize, okay, that's maybe from this period or that's from then.

Joel: Is your art affected by economics or politics that you're consciously aware of?

Leanne: Maybe, I think right now, less so. But I think what I want to make, I want to have some sort of commentary that is relevant to those things so that people can look back and be like, oh, maybe that was important for some reason.

Joel: Do you think it's possible to be a fully realized artist living in 21st century Canadian neo-liberalism? You got to pay rent, you got to put food on the table.

Leanne: Yeah, I think it's hard to be, but I think if, I don't know, I think you can be. It's just you got to make space for those other things, too. So whether that's fully realized or not, I don't know, but our society is definitely the way it is, so there's no getting around paying rent.

Joel: Not yet.

Leanne: Not yet. Not for me.

Joel: What would you make if you had no monetary constraints or environmental concerns?

Leanne: I think this painting series kind of that I mentioned would be kind of my root, because I do want it to be a little bit more grand in scale as well. So yeah, monetary value has a lot to do with my ability to start that, but yeah.

Joel: If I asked you to make something sacred to you, and you define sacred, however you want spiritual, material, whatever, what would you make? And you can't say the same painting series. Got to be a new idea.

Leanne: Okay. I don't know. I should have thought about this question a bit more.

Joel: It can be something about a loved one, for a loved one. Just something material that would always have a special place in your heart.

Leanne: Yeah, maybe. I don't even know how to answer this. I'm going to blow this question.

Joel: Nah. You’re doing great? There are no wrong answers.

Leanne: Yeah. Okay. Well, then what if I made a earn box to hold the ashes of all my ancestors?

Joel: I think that's very sacred.

Leanne: That would be super sacred. Right.

Joel: Where would you put that box?

Leanne: Probably on display somewhere in my house.

Joel: It's very Roman.

Leanne: Yeah.

Joel: The Romans did that.

Leanne: Yeah. Kind of weird, right?

Joel: They would have rooms in their houses with the remains of their ancestors.

Leanne: Yeah, if I had access to them. My grandma's remains are in Burnaby. If I could just take those and her husband's and bring them all together and make a little family earn, it's kind of morbid.

Joel: I think that's a beautiful idea.

Leanne: Yeah. Cool.

Joel: Now, the question that has been torturing you since I asked you to do this interview, if you had only three tools for woodworking for the rest of your life, what would those three tools be?

Leanne: Okay. I think I would go lathe, now that I've been very heavily working on the Lathe. And I'm just very much enjoying it. And so lathe would be one. Bandsaw, because I can do a lot with those. Like, my vases rely heavily on that. So I feel like I could figure out a lot of things and do with that. And a good drill. A good drill with some good bits.

Joel: That's not so bad. See? You hit it out of the park.

Leanne: Right.

Joel: What sensual memory of the shop will stay with you the longest? Sight, smell, sound, taste?

Leanne: Yeah. Probably like the feeling of constant dust in my nose and feeling really itchy and dusty all the time. That's one that's going to stay with me.

Joel: Yeah. This class converted me to an evening shower man. For my entire life, I was morning shower religiously. But now, this class, there's no point.

Leanne: Yeah. It's like now you got to just get it off. At the end of the day, it's not even worth it. Or you're taking two showers.

Joel: Exactly. What do you think of Sandra and Beth?

Leanne: They're amazing.

Joel: What's amazing about them?

Leanne: I just think Sandra is so cool in the way that she's just, I don't know. She's badass. Very cool. You look at her and just you wouldn't assume much, maybe, but she's just a master at what she does and so patient with dealing with all of us. And same with Beth. I think it's just the ability to take what you know, like your own knowledge and impart that on a bunch of students that are kind of fresh for the most part and just share that is pretty incredible. Yeah.

Joel: Final question is not really a question, but anything you want to share about your experience that we haven't talked about? Anything that you think is particularly important about fine furniture or art? Something you want to remember as part of your interview, as part of your process?

Leanne: Yeah. I just think it's worth making and it's worth doing these things, even though that's something I've struggled with a lot. Like, is it worth making the pretty chair when there's tons of chairs out there that are just fine? Or is it worth making a little wooden vase? If you have, like, a glass vase and there's already so much out there is kind of the feeling. And I feel that way with art.

Joel: Why is it worth it?

Leanne: Why is it worth it? I think because it brings fulfillment for me as a maker. And if that piece of art or furniture or whatever it might be impacts somebody else, they either really like it or even if they really don't like it. If it kind of stirs something. It's kind of worth doing, I think. Yeah.

Joel: I love it.

Leanne: Awesome.

Joel: Thanks. Leanne.

Leanne: Yes.

Joel: Appreciate it.