This is me, age 4.
Not too much has changed.
About Wood burning
Pyrography, if you’re fancy.
Pyrography literally means “fire writing,” and I wish I could tell you the image it conjures is the truth—that I spend my workdays dancing around in my studio, waving a flaming staff at a chunk of tree, risking life and limb and carbon monoxide poisoning to create my pieces.*
Unfortunately for my street cred, I use a Colwood electric wood burning pen (see above), which is a gorgeously effective tool, but essentially a hot marker.† Less badass than a burning staff, undeniably better for detail work.
Also less likely to lose me my security deposit.
So. Let’s talk about wood burning.
If you’ve tried it, chances are it was at summer camp. You know—you make a trivet out of popsicle sticks and hot glue and your counselor tells you to decorate it, so you grab something that looks like a giant pencil, plug it in, wait three and a half minutes for it to heat up, burn your finger testing the tip, drop it onto your lap and burn a hole through your shorts, and finally manage to eke out a blotchy pine tree that causes your ever-encouraging mother to exclaim, “What a nice canoe!” when you give it to her as a gift.^
Yeah, that was pretty much my experience, too.
But then I was in my twenties, living in Boston, and on a whim I picked up a $20 wood burning tool at a hobby shop. I proceeded to ignore it for a year, then I moved to Alaska** and had a month and a half where I had no job and way too much time on my hands, and I picked it up. And from the beginning, for a reason I still haven’t put my finger on††, wood burning clicked for me. It felt natural in a way that no other form of visual art ever had.
I’ve been burning and learning and expanding my knowledge and capabilities ever since. When I moved to from Anchorage to Denver in 2020, I was lucky enough to become part of a local woodworking community that taught me different kinds of woodwork (furniture & cabinet building, carving, wood turning), and I had a ton of fun finding ways to integrate these new skill sets into my wood burning. Having recently relocated to Los Angeles, I’m thrilled to continue on this path, and see what new experiences and opportunities lie ahead on the west coast!
*I badly want to meet the person who does this. She sounds like Xena.
†Xena wouldn’t use a hot marker.
^See “The Lanyard”. You’re welcome.
**Long story, but yes, it is very pretty, and yes, it is very cold.
††Unlike my wood burner, which I have definitively and repeatedly put my finger on.