When I graduated from the Boston Museum School, I knew very little about sculpture per se. After studying Printmaking, Painting, and Art History, I moved into a small shared corner of a warehouse in an industrial section of Boston. Traditional "art supplies” were beyond my budget. I began to paint on discarded wood shipping pallets I found in the back alley. The unexpected sales of these budget “pallet pieces” soon warranted an upgrade of the dull hand saw I used to dimension them. So, I elicited consumer advice from my new studio neighbor and rumored Sculpture Teacher, Barry Freedland.

 

When Barry introduced me to his 3HP Delta Unisaw, neither of us imagined the fuse we’d just lit, nor the years long mentorship that would follow. Barry taught me not just how to cut an old pallet, but also how to cut, join, finish and otherwise manipulate every material from exotic satinwood to stainless steel. As two dimensional art began to lose its comparative luster, and as Barry— for reasons still mysterious to me — continued to field my incessant technical questions, I began, like him, to refer to my studio instead as a “shop”.