Artificer.

Noun: A cunning or artful fellow.

Titles and names are obnoxious things. Fences on pastures that should be wide open plains. I’ve heard said that to name a thing is akin to enacting violence on that thing.

Perhaps its my Viking genetics that crave pillage, plunder and violence, because I cannot help but carry through with slapping nomenclature on everything I come in contact with.

For years I identified my creative self as a “woodworker.” The term did circumscribe the majority of my creative endeavors, but it lead to weird conversations because the common response was “What kind of woodworking do you do?”

and before I could say anything, there was often a version of this uncomfortably grating guess…

“Oh oh oh, do you do kitchen cabinets? My brother in law built all of his kitchen cabinets. Milled the wood himself from his farm. Took him three years but they’re beautiful.”

I stopped using the word woodworker when I spoke about my shop and studio. Instead I tried “Artist” (even adding the capital “A”) but that word sums up even more baggage heavy conversations.

I searched for a term that could encompass all my creative endeavors. Woodworking, Antique Restoration and Repair, Writing, Blogging, Illustration, Watercolor, Photography, Comic Book Making, Reproduction Prop Making, Miniature Kitbashing and Painting, Game Terrain Crafting, Game Mastering for Table Top RPG’s, Playing and Recording Music, Podcasting, Crafting Cocktails, Collecting Weird Ephemera, Book Collecting, Medieval Historical Reenactment, Medieval Combat Reenactment, Work with and for Area Museums, Public Speaking…

And I can go on from there.

I don’t understand the force inside me that has lead to this place, the desire to be the human equivalent of the “Room of Requirement” from the Harry Potter book series. but never the less - here I am.

So how do you sum that up when someone asks you what you do in your shop, a place where one week I can be assembling a parquetry panel for the inside of a cabinet door and the next I can be tracing wires to revive an 1970’s era soda vending machine and the week after that I might be leveling the frets and doing a lutherie set up on a knock-off Stratocaster I bought for cheep on Facebook Marketplace.

I’ve chosen the word Artificer as the sum of the equation. To me it stands as a word that simply screams “I Make Stuff!” and when people ask me “What do you make?” the answer is simple…

Two things. Whatever interests me, or whatever I need.

The collection of all my creative endeavors is the point of this reboot - this new endeavor - this attempt to rediscover the joy I found in sharing the process, thoughts, trials, failures, successes, and just, all the Good Hours I get to spend making. For a long time I tried to compartmentalize my endeavors, a different Instagram feed and Blog for each thing. The fracturing of it all was my undoing. Seeing a friend and mentor start an endeavor here introduced me to the platform and, it felt like the chance for that fresh start. To gather all the clowns under the same big top.

The story behind the phrase “Good Hours” will come soon, but for now, all you need to know is, the posts here, from this one forward, will be eclectic in subject, they will be real in language (Incoming Curse Word Alert! Deal with it!) they will be real in though, whether I’m succeeding or failing.

They will each be a Love Letter to the things I like doing. A Love Letter to spending time making something.

That’s enough for now.

Love Derek

Ratione et Passionis