In 2021, I created Box with the Sound of its Own Making if We are to Imagine the Act of Becoming Not as a Solitary Endeavor but a Complex Web of Interdependent Relationships. It is a 4-in. by 4-in. cube made from a precious olive branch pruned from a tree in Barnsdall Art Park. The park, with its 100-year-old olive grove, is a stone’s throw away from my home in Los Angeles, and I frequent it often for sunsets and birthday picnics. Inspiration for the piece was drawn from Robert Morris’s seminal work, Box with the Sound of its Own Making, in which Morris recorded himself building the box and left the recordings to play on loop inside. Mine similarly holds looping sounds—field recordings taken from the park—highlighting a different way the box was made: the atmospheric conditions in which the tree grew.

This piece and its long title are a meditation on community and environment as well as an homage to the living material that makes my art possible. Its hyper-locality and celebration of our interconnectedness are my guiding principles; but how to scale them beyond the symbolic, especially in the often extractive and solitary field of woodworking, is a much more complex task.

Would Works and Angel City Lumber are two local Los Angeles projects that have together managed such a task, seamlessly combining multiple community initiatives into a full-circle project of reciprocity and sustainability.  Would Works is nonprofit social enterprise that provides paid job training in woodworking to Angelenos who face employment barriers. Angel City Lumber is a local lumber company that saves urban trees from wood chippers and landfills, turning them into usable material.

Their joint venture began with salvaging trees killed in the Bobcat Fire of 2020 from the Angeles National Forest, one of our local mountain ranges, milling and drying them. The salvaged lumber is now being used for Would Works’ Community Builders Program that teaches more advanced woodworking to its artisans. The furniture being made by the program is designed specifically for common spaces of affordable and permanent supportive housing sites, the type which provide housing for some of the artisans themselves.

Wildfires are inherently good but after decades of fire suppression and drought we’re seeing the devastation they can reap on our landscape.  Instead of staying in the forest—creating tinder for the next overly destructive fire—the dead trees were given new life and transformed into furniture made from, by, and for the community. In these tangible and inspiring ways, Would Works and Angel City Lumber have created a lasting framework on how to share woodworking while taking care of each other and the environment. Their actions are a compass for my own work and I hope to see projects like theirs proliferate in the future.

Would Works is a nonprofit that can be supported by buying their handmade wares or donating directly. Angel City Lumber has an impressive selection of beautiful local material and is open to the public.  Both can be followed on Instagram: @wouldworks and @angelcitylumber.