When I was 21 years old, I found a dog on the side of the road in a small Texas town. I brought her home and took her to see a vet, as she was in bad shape.  She was terrified of people and had been abused horribly. No one was optimistic about the outcome, since she'd cower and pee in fear every time someone came near her. Even my mother, dog lover extraordinaire, wondered if maybe the kindest thing to do was put her down. Mom also thought I was too young- "It will never work out," she said.
(A note on the bird in the photo: this was Humper, who terrorized all the family dogs until we had to give him away.)

But with love and patience and a dog shrink, Carlo (whom I named for Emily Dickinson's beloved companion, although she was a girl dog) became my heart. I was for her and she was for me. We were best friends. She was my constant and faithful companion. In my whole life, before or since, I have never had such a friend. She was the dumbest, but also the sweetest, creature I have ever met.

Sixteen years after I found her, we had a vet come to the house and put her to sleep, and it broke my heart. We waited a few days too long and she was in fear and pain as she hadn't been since I found her. When she was gone, I cried for months. I discovered that pet death makes it OK to cry in the grocery store line, because everyone around you knows how it feels and will comfort you.

We're atheists in our house, but sentimental ones. I know if I had been able to ask Carlo what she wanted after death, she would say she wanted to be near me as she always was in life. So we made a box for her and put her ashes in it on our mantel, and there she is, some years later (Link to box).

And that's how we started making boxes, and being especially committed to making cremation boxes for beloved animal friends. If there's any religious idea I wish I could get behind, it's the Rainbow Bridge. If you don't know the Rainbow Bridge story, here it is:

When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge.
There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together.
There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable.

All the animals who had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor; those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by.
The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing; they each miss someone very special to them, who had to be left behind.

They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. His bright eyes are intent; His eager body quivers. Suddenly he begins to run from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster.

You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart.

Then you cross Rainbow Bridge together....

This sounds great. I fail to see why a major religion has not formed around this idea.

And I'm still waiting for my mother's apology. It worked out.

We have just been accepted to the 46th annual Salado Art Fair in Salado, Texas- our first juried art fair!  Link
It's October 27-28  on the banks of Salado Creek. We're honored- this is considered a very good Texas art fair. Please consider the drive to Salado to see us and the other artists at the end of October. It's a gorgeous little art town about 50 miles from Austin.

An update on the octopus box: We have a gorgeous grenadillo box with a wave pattern (and a fish in the grain!), and a beautiful spalted pecan top with tiny turquoise inlays for the top, and we have a piece of bone carved like fishes for the lift. We taped the crap out of it so it is watertight to the octopus base and poured in epoxy so that part of the base of the box is glass and the part that overhangs the glass is clear epoxy- it needs some fine sanding, but it will be great. We'll add some tentacle-like wood pieces that will go from the box down to stabilize it without covering up any of the glass. The wood is some of my favorite in our recent work- it's just perfect. And the octopus was one of those etchings that just worked really well with the glass piece.

Tom is also finishing a box he's been messing with for a while- a mesquite  and wenge deal- weird and lovely as you can see. He finally found the right wood for the top- a walnut burl with some weird edges. We're considering several lid lifts for this.

We have way too many projects and not enough time to get them done- there's a lot of parts of boxes sitting on the shelf.  It would probably help if I didn't have a part-time day job (and if I weren't scared of the saws), but I do love teaching. It's probably weird to like spending time with 14-year-olds, but I do (if any of my students are reading this- go study! We have a test on Monday).

We saw the catalog proof for the East Austin Studio Tour, and WOW! There are a ton of amazing artists participating. I'll have to slink away from the shop during the tour so I can see some of the other folks myself. I'm particularly impressed by the metal workers (Brady Foster at metalshopstudio.com,  Colby Brinkman at metalmantis.com/,  Colin McIntyre at sculptureforge.com/-, and the intriguing Foster Talge with no website). I've been wanting a really wonderful unique metal front gate for our house (which currently has a nice standard Home Depot gate- blah).  It doesn't look like I need to go far to find someone to do it. Fortunately for us, though, there do not appear to be any other box-makers involved, so if you like boxes, we're your folks.

Man, having a teenaged parrot is tough. She's unpredictable, moody, territorial, usually covered with food as in pic...
Before we got her, we read something about having a parrot being like having a tiny dragon, which sounds really cool if you don't give it a lot of thought (especially if you read the Anne McCaffrey dragon books when you were a kid). Tiny dragon is absolutely correct. She rules the household with her sulky moods. And she was such a darling sunny baby, always singing and talking and snuggling. Now it's all screaming and demanding and general bitchiness. Although she can still be very snuggly- she's snuggling on Tom's shoulder right now making nice cooing noises- but she's worn out from ordering us around all day.

I will say life is much funnier with a parrot around. We give her pecans from our tree, and when she tries to crack them, they shoot out of her claw and hit her in the stomach, and then she gets angry and leaps on the offending nut and attacks it and it hits her again. Epic battle of the biological Kingdoms.

Right now she has climbed down off her perch and run across the floor and is turning in weird fluttery circles like a wind-up toy. At least she is more or less trained not to poop on us.

Which reminds me: I have several bird boxes in mind. The peacock box turned out really well (see it on the header- it's also for sale under "wood and glass boxes"), and I have a parakeet cage box in mind. I already etched glass pieces with parakeets (see pic), and when I can nag Tom into it, he'll hopefully make them into a box with two glass sides with small wood bars coming down over the glass. A cage-like handle and voila.

The rose box is finished! It turned out gorgeous and we'll be putting it on "wood and glass boxes" for sale later today. We chickened out of putting real rose thorns on it, though. It's just perfect as it is.

And a total derail of the topic: because I am a giant nerd, I have to crow about the fact that I have tickets to Austin's Comic Con in late October, for the Star Trek: TNG festivities, WITH a photo op with Captain Picard. Oh, the joy. It doesn't suck that the Walking Dead folks will also be there. I cannot wait to put a photo of me in the Captain's lap on my classroom wall. What DOES one wear for such an occasion?

So we got a little derailed on the rose box, but are back on track. We have a small rosewood box for the top, and will put thin wenge legs (like stems) to support it. We have pale green glass leaves to put on the stems, which will make it really gorgeous and different (and also very fragile). We are toying with the idea of putting real rose thorns on the legs(the upside of having a recently dead rosebush), but that would make it pretty sharp and yet more fragile. I'm not sure how appealing this would actually be to anyone, and it would probably be a pain in the ass.

On a totally different note, I really like cephalopods, and we already made one octopus wood and glass box, at left (it's for sale under "wood and glass boxes" on the website!).  This one was fun to make, although it took a LOT of carving with the sandblaster.  I've been wanting to design a completely different octopus box that had a more watery effect than this one. The round glass skeleton box we finished recently (see last post) was a good model for another box on a big glass base.

So I etched this octopus on a 2" thick piece of clear glass. The bubbles in the glass are great- the octopus really looks as if it's under water. We'll use some lovely tulipwood that is two-toned with a wavy pattern for a long box, and we'll attach it to the glass base (how? Don't know yet). I'd like to stabilize it from being rolly by making curvy wood tentacles that come down from the box to the tabletop. on either side of the glass, so no base will be necessary.

I'd kind of like to combine the rose and octopus themes- perhaps an octopus with roses wound into its tentacles?

We have been accepted to be a part of the East Austin Studio Tour (EAST), Nov 10-11 and Nov 17-18! It's a great opportunity to come see our workshop and our boxes, as well as the work of many other Austin artists. We're thrilled- it will be our first time.

If you're thinking about having a custom box made, this is a good time to scope out the woods we have in stock (we have quite a few really unique pieces of wood right now) and talk in person about design options.

See you at EAST!

Link to the EAST site

I had this really lovely piece of facet-edged, rectangular glass that was clear and gorgeous. The problem was it had a hole in top, as I think it was meant to be an award piece of glass that would be attached to a base through this hole. So we decided to use the hole to make it a slide on/off top for a box. Here's the glass. I etched it from a photo of a skeleton curled in a grave.

And here's the box being clamped together. It's a gorgeous dark wenge that will show off the skeleton really well. This will have a stainless screw with a nice flat top that will hold the glass to the wood and allow the top to swivel on and off the box (at least, we hope. What could go wrong?)

This box is now for sale on our "wood and glass boxes" page!

If we keep making skeleton boxes, I'll have to make a category for them. Here's another one we just finished, with largely the same skeleton design as above, but on a really thick round piece of glass. We liked the effect of the skeleton holding the box up. We made a bird's eye maple box for it, and fit it over the box so the round top of the glass is the bottom of the box. It's actually watertight since we poured lacquer in the bottom to hold the box to the glass. Then we made a base and used an iridescent piece of abalone shell that looks like a bone for the lid lift. We wanted to use a real bone, but all the bones we had were too small and looked too breakable.

Weird, huh? This is what happens when you don't have a master plan for your art. It's for sale now under "Wood and Glass Boxes" on our website!

And we liked this so much that I etched an octopus on another round piece of glass like this one. More on the octopus as it comes together in a box.

We've finally got our webpage running! You can now buy boxes off the website using google checkout. About our work: we don't have a standard style, other than a general love of animals that is clear in much of our work. We prefer to let the wood tell us what shape is right for it, or to let the design of a glass component guide the shape of the box. For instance, in our snake box, shown here, we carved and etched the glass pieces and then noticed that the wonderful natural snake shapes on a piece of ambrosia maple would complement  the glass. When we carve wood, we generally let the natural grain and knots in the wood dictate the carved shape.

Here's a piece we're working on now:

I carved the glass rose with the sandblaster, and it was pretty obvious that we should use rosewood for the box. Since we wanted some impression of light coming up through the glass, we carved a hole for it in a piece of rosewood, epoxied the rose into it, and then attached a piece of white holly underneath to get a sense of lightness. Then it seemed some rose-like color was in order,so we attached a piece of purpleheart to the bottom of that. Now we'll step down the rosewood so the top will fit into a rosewood box. I do think this one should have legs (stems?). Hopefully this piece will be done soon and you can find it for sale under "wood and glass boxes" on the website. Total time invested so far in the top: 3 hours carving, 2 hours for making the rest of the top and assembling it.
Another pic of the rose: