10 Hallmarks for Thinking with Craft

OVERVIEW: This article was inspired by research I conducted with Mastercraftsmen & Women in 2016. As part of that effort, I wrote a series #LookToCraftsmen posts that provide context for the book is set for publication in 2019. Some tips to help free the mind and connect with your innate creativity.

A few years ago, I spent time studying master craftsmen and women and how they get better at what they do. This work culminated in a book, Look To Craftsmen, pending publication. That effort kicked off a deep fascination I have human being's penchant for creativity and it offers some advice for living a more inspired life, of living and working with Craft. Far from the often romanticized amber sunbeams cast across wood shavings and worn leather aprons, the process is often messy and riddled with contradictions. For example, I describe master ceramicist Louise Pentz's method for evolving her work emphasizing constant editing--to the point where she actively deconstructs her work or proactively damages it. Some might think her "focus on destroying refinement extreme or merely artistic license. However, she knows giving up an attachment to perfection she will reach new thresholds in her knowledge." In this way, Craftsmanship is not a result; it is a process (of learning by doing). Craftsmanship is about standing apart from the mainstream, by standing out through unique, quality work. As Louise herself explains it, "You’re hoping for the mistakes, because...too much control and the outcome loses some of its essence. Our natural tendency is to be judgmental and controlling. This has two negative consequences: we are less happy and our work is mediocre."

Of course, few of us consider ourselves creative in the way that craftsmen and artists are creative. But creativity is so much more than natural talent. It is a state of mind. Craftsmen and women have an attitude that they bring to every task. There is a general air of spontaneity. They question everything about the world and the way things work, breaking things and reconstructing them again. As a result, they are continually seeing their medium through new eyes, the eyes of a genuine learner, even though they have so much experience. Not only are they solving problems, but they are also finding new ones all the time. It's a way of being.

Prescribed solutions do not work for the perplexing, complex problems we face today. In order to adapt, we need to build up our subjective intelligence systematically. Those of us who don’t have language for subjective qualities have to learn it. This often impacts us where it counts: following dreams or advancing professionally. If you are a person who consciously works at these capabilities, these tips might provide some insight on how to develop your creativity with deeper focus.Along with creativity, the concept of failure is starting to become popular again, which is heartening. But few people have experience true failure enough to know what it is in order to court the kind of risk it requires. We are told to "fail fast" as if it were a small thing.  We know, inherently, that each one of us needs to have courage. We need to be willing to fail, learn from that, get up, and try again.What’s most surprising to me about creativity and transformative learning isn’t, as most research suggests, that people haven’t realized how powerful it can be. We know, in theory, that learning, asking tough questions, curiosity and creativity are powerful leadership behaviors.

What’s most surprising are the subtle ways we resist these qualities. I don’t believe we need to learn the benefits of creativity, per say--we already know them. I believe we need to focus on learning to tame our resistance to allow creativity (and the failure that comes with it) to happen--that, is what sets Craftsmen apart.

Here are ten hallmarks to help you unlock your inner Craftsman and tap into your innate creativity:

1. Inspiration and creativity cannot be forced or approached directly.

Sometimes a deadline can help spur your creativity. Other times a specific task or job requires some level of imagination to complete. But generally speaking, focusing on the result doesn't achieve the inspired performance we are seeking. You cannot achieve inspiration through sheer will. You don't wake up and say to yourself, "today I will be creative." And, the more you want it the less likely it is to appear. Creativity requires space. Craftsmen do not approach gaining expertise directly. There is no straight path, no “one thing” that will get them there—it’s everything they do, together.

2. Know when you are in the presence of bias. 

From elementary school to the workplace, we have a bias against individual expression and unique choice. Craftsmen feel stifled by environments where they need to conform to a standard. They are in the business of elevating standards, requiring them to question the status quo. The standardization of education and work really kills creativity. How can students and 9-to-5ers overcome rigid structures? By tapping their intuition. When you find something that ignites your curiosity and interest, find an outlet to express it.

3. Balance IQ with EQ.

Achieving craft in our decision making means learning to use judgment, imagination and improvisational discernment in our own work. Turning simple problems into craftsman’s problems means relaxing our grip on what we perceive to be objective data (there is none). We need to value subjective knowledge and better integrate our multiple intelligences toward creative solutions.The stonemason sees a relationship between the way shadows play on one side of a rock and structures the rest of her vision around this emerging relationship; a CEO weighs market reactivity and customer pressure, then makes a far-reaching decision on shifting culture more aggressively toward more sustainable practices. As they work, neither the mason nor the CEO limits their judgment strictly to data or deductive reasoning.

4. Remain unfazed by failure and fame.

Failure and fame are two sides of the same coin and one that craftsman find of little value. No matter how devastating the failures might be, and no matter how awe-inspiring their successes, the measure of performance is not what matters to most craftsmen. Failure and fame are traps that true craftsmen work hard to avoid. Craftsmen rely mainly on their own evaluations. They compare what they produce to the ideals they pursue. They evaluate their effectiveness based on how closely they create what they intend. They judge what they produce by assessing the subjective quality of those qualities displayed.

5. Manage Feelings and Feel.

True craftsmen know the difference between emotional feelings and feel in their medium. They know that the feelings they have for their work—whether upsetting reactions or motivating passions—can distract their attention from the critical connection they have to their medium…their perception and recognition of certain qualities. To keep their perception and recognition abilities in the presence of failure, success, drama, difficulty, exhaustion, discouragement, challenge, derivation, hurt, fear, anxiety, grief, uncertainty, excitement, and the like, craftsmen cultivate the ability to discern feelings from feel. When feelings threaten to flood perception, the craftsman remains open, curious, empathetic, interested, fascinated, determined, brave, sensitive, intrigued, surprised, attentive and focused.

6. Go after process and outcomes, simultaneously.

Craftsmen develop their outcomes as they engage the process, at the same time. Sometimes this happens on a grand scale, as when Zingerman’s embarked on a 15-year vision. Sometimes this happens on a smaller scale, as when Sanna determines and adjusts felt for a particular piece she is working on, or Eric learns from a particular piece of joinery that isn’t working. What is common to all is what Donald Schön called, the ‘conversation with the situation.’ This conversation generates and then reshapes both ends and means as the situation changes in response to the craftsman, and the craftsman learns.

7. Be compelled by your subject. 

Craftsmen are fascinated by their medium, so much so, it's a compulsion. They think about the idiosyncrasies of their medium all the time. This comes from total involvement in the work and full immersion in all the qualities and aspects of the medium. It’s a kind of love and affection. Despite adjectives of “total” and “full” this relationship or connection to the medium is a never-ending learning process. There is no point at which the craftsman feels he or she knows all there is to know. Experiences change from day to day—whether using clay or managing a business—and there are always qualities yet to be practiced. These may remain overlooked until subtle shifts of awareness bring them into focus. Once experienced, qualities can be interpreted and used to guide action. Achieving this unity, craftsmen acquire feel in their medium.

8. Embrace paradox.

Craftsmen welcome the tension of paradox. They enjoy melding two seemingly contradictory ideas that lead to some new understanding of their medium. We accept a lot of false dichotomies in our lives, such as the imaginary line between work and play. Craftsmen are good at trusting their intuition but also being highly rational in their analysis of whether their work is complete, or good, or in need of development. Craftsmen are highly sensitive but are capable of staying true to their values even under significant pressure.

9. Remain Open. Hold knowledge lightly.

To push the boundaries of what they know, craftsmen demonstrate expertise in response to the qualities they recognize and, at the same time, generate original responses when the situation inspires. Craftsmen are committed to building skill, working effectively, and achieving control in their medium; and, they also maintain and openness, seek novelty, generate variation, and invite surprise. Balancing these competing forces is a temporary achievement that craftsmen know they must leave behind. In transient moments of balance or flow, craftsmen combine expertise and ingenuity to create ideas, products, performances, and outcomes that are both excellent and original.

10. Express beliefs, understanding, and awareness in action.

Using our imagination is one way we adapt. Being deliberate about how we approach problem-solving, and doing it in a way that helps us adapt and improve is a beautiful human quality. Subjective intelligence involves the crafting understanding of experience, as reflected in the grace of storytelling and elegance of using imaginative models to simplify the complexity of the problems we deal with.

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All of these qualities suggest that Craftsmen think differently because they do something very distinct from everyone else: they create contemplative practices in their lives, or habits, that force them to think about their priorities, goals, and work with more depth than people using their job as a means to an end. That depth pays huge dividends when it comes to quality of work and gratification in one’s work. Christine Haskell, PhD is a researcher, writer, and leadership consultant specializing in personal and professional mastery. She emphasizes deep self-awareness and reflection with practices that stick, so people can take responsibility for their own development. By taking charge of their own learning busy leaders become more intentional about developing their own path for the future.

It's safest inside a ring of fire

Some truths are counter-intuitive.

My focus has been to study master craftsmen. Craftsmen are innovators, working on the fridge or trade, and focused on raising standards. I look at what they do and how they think can be applied in other areas.

Craftsmen tend to work alone. They are in community with other craftsmen, but they work day in and day out by themselves. They are in the business of playing with standards and elevating them. They do this through innovation and creativity.

There is great power in groups. We all know the kinds of things we can accomplish with strong teams. But this article focuses on the trouble we can get into when craftsmen encounter groups. And I want to point to a parallel that happens with people embracing creative problem-solving, trying to push through norms, and how organizations respond.

When groups grow, they become more coherent and pull together. They start to share an identity and see things similarly. They become powerful. These qualities can build cohesiveness on the one hand, and group-think on the other.

A challenge to both the craftsmen and the groups they interact with is that individuals outside the group are trying to work with existing standards, something the group is familiar with, and create something new.  This difference gets aggravated by the fact that innovations are experienced as happening out of sync.

The cliche "they were ahead of their time" comes to mind, but no one is ahead of their time. People invent in reaction to something (an event, a set of ideas, etc.). This is why we experience innovations as unpredictable.

We rarely recognize them as solutions or potential answers to a problem. We don't know what to do with them when we see them. They make us think differently. They change the way we understand and engage the world around us. They force us to learn something new.

The virtue of any particular innovation is hard to judge until you've tried it.

As a result, communities often fear what they can't understand. More often than we would like, we circle the wagons believe around our beliefs, shunning the new idea. We don't even want to give it a try.

History shows us that bad things can happen at least temporarily and good things are lost. They are lost often at a time when they're needed most.

It's fire season here in Seattle, so it seems like a good time to reflect on firefighting, in general, and in particular, a 1949 fire that fundamentally changed the way we approach fighting fires.

This particular fire is a cautionary story and it's an important illustration of how the issue of learning well, how we can meet challenge head-on, and predict that it's going to happen because it happens over and over and over again throughout history.

The fire-fighting crew this group was a very heroic bunch of young men between the ages of 17 to 22. They called themselves "smoke jumpers." The last of them recently passed in 2014. They were the first firemen to parachute from a plane into remote areas to fight forest fires. The smoke jumpers were a courageous, elite group held together by their group values, their mission, and the courage to do accomplish a difficult job. They dropped into a chaotic environment with the few resources they could carry.

It's most important to remember for this story is that these men knew if the fire came toward them, they could find safety on the top of a ridge. A ridge provides a natural break in the line of fire.

The innovator of the story, Dodge, was older and more experienced than the group. He could do everything the smoke jumpers could, but better. He had a great reputation and a lot of experience. He was also a reticent, quiet man. He took care of everything in the base camps. But he wasn't one of them.

The day of the fire, he was their Foreman. They didn't know him personally and it was the first time he had actually led them as a group. Left in the afternoon to meet the fire and they were on the ground fighting by five o'clock. We know because they found a watch that was melted indicating the fire confronted them 59 minutes later at 5:59. The incident happened in a very short period of time.

This is a familiar dynamic between communities and innovator.

In a crisis or pressure-filled experience, it's never time that matters,

it's the certainty with which we hold our views that seems to make a difference.

When they saw this fire the innovator saw one thing, and the group saw another. The kids saw something they could conquer they could tame. They referred to such fires as "ten o'clock fires" and laughed about them.  But Dodge saw the fire and saw something different. He saw a fire that was about to explode and get out of control. He tried to move the group down toward a river that ran through the center of the fire, where they could safely fight the fire within relative safety. They would be able to exit through the river.

But the wind was so strong grass just burst into flame between them and the river and they were trapped. He told them to run. At this point, their only option was uphill, against a fire traveling 100 yards a minute. This was a race they would not win.

At that moment, he did something that at the time that no one had ever done before. He took a pack of matches out of his pocket, turned toward the fire, and lit a ring around himself. He had invented what is now called an escape fire. It is something that every forest firefighter has been educated in today and has saved many many lives since.

The term now means....

escape fire noun, \is-’kāp\’fī(-ə)r\

1. a swath of grassland or forest intentionally ignited in order to provide shelter from an oncoming blaze.

2. an improvised, effective solution to a crisis that cannot be solved using traditional approaches.

The fire was approaching fast. He called to his men and said to them, "Step with me into this fire."

The team was running as their training had instructed them to do. Fifteen smoke jumpers ran for the ridge because that was the knowledge that they could rely on.  But Dodge took his canteen out, watered a cloth for this face, knelt in the ashes, and laid down in the ashes of the fire he had burned. The fire burned over him. Other firefighters found a lucky pile of stone. But the fire caught the rest of the men.

Dodge, the foreman, survived the fire by staying in the circle he had burned in the grass. Two more made it to the top of the ridge, only to watch ten members of their team fall to the fire. Two more died the next day in a hospital. All but one died of smoke inhalation.

This is a sad story and I don't tell it to make you feel sad. However, this urgency of communication and influencing between innovator and group is one that breaks down all the time. You only have to look back through history:

• the first time we were told the earth is flat;

• the first time someone said microscopic things are responsible for disease

• the first time someone said vehicles can go underwater, through the sky, and into space

• the first time someone said a computer could fit in our pocket

• first time Lady Gaga said I'm going to be a rock and star Idol

Whenever groups come together, they have common beliefs and their identity is preserved by them holding on to those beliefs. Innovators need to understand that when they are calling people to come with them to a new idea
they're inviting them into an unproven fire.

No one knows if someone says "I have the greatest idea in the world" if it's going to work or if it's going to be a disaster until effort happens. I think in every group we have to ask questions and assign mechanisms that allow us to be open to ideas we haven't anticipated.

As innovators, we have to find better ways to communicate and accept new ideas while maintaining our relationships. There have to be better ways to pool ideas and share resources in times of stress.

I know that was an intense story, but I want you to think about how you go through your day and interact with others when you are a member of a community that is holding to beliefs, or an innovator approaching a problem from the outside-in.

You are both. You are going to be in communities that you're working hard to build and you're a creative innovator that has ideas that people around you will not understand. So the question that we all need to answer for ourselves, and it's a different answer for everyone, is:

what is the one thing you can do if you're a member of a community

to see what's possible when what is presented

is something you don't understand?

OR

when you take the role of innovator 

and you are telling someone what is possible, 

and sharing how you see differently or more effectively?

In the end, learning new ideas, and really being able to try them on when it counts, is the way we move forward. It's about getting over our own anxiety. Change is not the problem. I'm not entirely convinced that we even mind failure so much.

The problem for most of us is fear of deviating from a leading strategy.

Just look what it's doing to the business of healthcare, education, and poverty.

A Framework for Learning: 3 Kinds of Intelligence

Photo by Rich Smith

Collective intelligence involves a transformation in the way we think about human capability. It suggests that all are capable rather than a few; that intelligence is multiple rather than a matter of solving puzzles with only one right answer; and that our human qualities for imagination and emotional engagement are as important as our ability to become technical experts.

—Philip Brown and Hugh Lauder, Capitalism and Social Progress

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Craftsmanship is an emergent capability. It cannot be approached directly. Too often when we engage in learning something new, we start by trying to replicate the thing that inspired us. Like babies learning to walk or talk, we mimic or copy others. As adults, we often look to the finished performance or piece rather than the grind of getting there. If I were to attempt the gingerbread trim Eric works on as my first project, for example, it would lead to frustration and disappointment. A much more productive path to learning craftsmanship is to understand how various categories of intelligence form an internal Navigation System.

CONSIDER

• How does one describe something that is so intangible? Something that decades of psychologists have not been able to quantify? Something that people with certain skills can recognize on sight, but couldn’t think of a way to directly test for?

• I looked over my interview notes, developed themes, and started asking questions that captured, sometimes verbatim, descriptions of what it means to live and work with craft.

• Half the questions had to do with perseverance but specifically resolving challenges that lie just beyond their current skills. I asked if they “overcame setback to overcome a challenge” but also, how. Did they “take classes, ask others for help, or engage trial and error?” The other half of the questions were about their connection to their work. I asked, “how their interests have deepened over time” and about the nature of their “obsession” with their medium.

• What emerged was a personal Navigation System—an approach to self-reflection that if honestly undertaken, illustrates your ability to approach work like a craftsman. The model can help you can get better at what you do and take responsibility for your own learning by highlighting experiences and questions to broaden your awareness.

In speaking with masters across several disciplines, a navigation system emerged supporting the kind of craft we’ve been exploring. Understanding how we learn helps direct how we go about our work and can inform how we might do it with more attention to craft. People learning something new can use this navigation system to make better sense of and learn more from those with more expertise, even when they communicate incompletely or inconsistently. Using this as a tool to increase awareness, the novice can also learn independently with greater effectiveness. The system contains three distinct categories of learning: Experience (gets you where you want to go), Tools (shows you where you are headed), and Guidance (anchors you where you are).

• EXPERIENCES are about walking the territory. They include awareness, savvy, know-how, practicality, skills, understandings, feel, instinct, techniques, methods, and appearance. All skills, even the most abstract, begin as physical practices. With these fundamentals, you experience and shape qualities in your creative medium to produce results. Craftsmanship relies on all three categories of knowledge are working in concert. Then, you develop a nuanced awareness of the qualities in your creative medium (business, woodwork, healthcare, etc.), as well as the skills to create and manipulate those qualities.

• TOOLS are about using the map. They include ideas, concepts, models, equations, theories, categories, heuristics, diagrams, plans, recipes, standards, criteria and prototypes. Understanding abstraction requires the powers of imagination. These elements help you to organize your understanding and preserve knowledge.

• ORIENTATION is our inner compass. It refers to our sense of direction and is our guidance system. It includes purpose, principles, incentives, morals, individualities, motivations, identities, values, beliefs, contexts and missions. These elements are core to your identity. They provide meaning, motivation, attention and direction. Your identity shapes your work.

These categories of intelligence link and inform one another as we learn. Using my conversation with Eric about his craft, I’ll introduce the Navigation System and demonstrate how it works.

The model illustrates the components of a personal navigation system. It contains three distinct categories of learning: Experience, Tools, and Orientation. By understanding these intelligence categories and the relationships between them, you can take more responsibility for your own learning and drive your own path toward craftsmanship in whatever you do. We have three categories of intelligence. When one category informs another, it naturally drives shifts in thinking.

As I listen to Eric, I want to understand his Navigation System. His stories provide a window to how he approaches his craft. He shares a series of circumstances that led to his opportunity to develop a trade and later a craft. His words also point to sometimes disruptive forces that move the Navigation System forward. True craftsmanship never plateaus because craftsmen are in a constant state of learning and trying to break the boundaries of their medium.

Eric shared that his pivot from auto shop, to logging, to the sophisticated woodworking he does today is guided by those that believed and invested in him (his shop teacher, the banker, and the owner of the building in need of restoration). The belief of others, and more importantly their sponsorship, is important to the success of someone learning. Not only it can be very motivating, it can direct someone’s life path. This sense of taking advantage of every opportunity, of “taking a bite at the apple”, dominates his drive to learn. Achieving what he sets out to do, Eric turns anxiety into belief in himself—which remains his primary motivation.

Eric is in and of the Redwood Forest and uses the materials around him. He is also in constant pursuit of the new, building up both his home base and skills base by taking jobs squarely outside of his area of expertise. He acquired the tools for a blacksmith shop, a pottery kiln, and a printing press all to complete projects for which he didn’t have the immediate abilities. “The problem solving is what I thrive on and I’m good at it.” All of his tools are from before 1948, the year he was born. Eric doesn’t think he “works well with the mainstream” and so has crafted a life and world for himself where he doesn’t have to mix too much with it. Secluded in woodland, he reaches out much like a radio signal seeking connection on his own terms (and turf). All of his choices would be unthinkable to someone with different orientation ethics such as fast growth, using the cheapest materials possible.

ERIC: We tell our customers jokingly that we offer three things: speed, quality, and price—and they only get to pick one. We don’t use off-the-shelf products. The machines I used are the same machines my father and grandfather would have used. Everything we do is high-end, custom work. Yes, we’re late. Yes, I underbid the job. Yes, the customer is pissed we slipped our date. But we have to make certain that all that magically goes away when we deliver—and it happens every time.  

Simultaneously, Eric has been influenced by several social revolutions in his Guidance that orient him with his medium. There was the time when lumber prices fell so low people thought the town might collapse. Then technology in the form of lathe cutters made competing on price against national hardware stores an impossibility. Later, green movements placed emphasis on working sustainably, making Eric’s approach to work more attractive again. Living through these revolutions helped form Eric’s perspective and value system.

ERIC: Computerized bandsaw mills were slicing out more boards in a minute than I could make in a day or maybe a week. But all the big timber companies are on the edge, just about priced out of the market. Us gyppos[1] are going to be all that’s left one day. We’re like the bears and the banana slugs and the mushrooms out in the woods. We’re native species, and we’re not going away. Not until the woods themselves go away.

Changes in Guidance tend toward the revolutionary.[i] Experiences we have to change the perception we have of ourselves and our reasoning behind decisions. Happening within ourselves or around us, these revolutions change the meaning of our actions and choices.They change our place in society relative to others. Craftsmen were regarded as obsolete as production in factories rose. Now, there is a resurgence of Makers (maker movements, maker spaces, etc.). Some woodworkers have amassed followings by creating popular YouTube channels. There are now several shows on television featuring craftsmen/maker competitions.

As major changes in global consciousness take place, it impacts the Tools we choose. As Eric reflects, woodworking is an evolution in understanding.

CHRISTINE: Tell me how you figured your way through a hard project.

ERIC: Did you see the Lincoln Hearse? Nothing that we did for that reproduction had been done since 1863. That was incredible! I did that with twelve veterans that had never had a tape measure in their hands before.

CHRISTINE: What were you really up against? What were you trying to tackle?

ERIC: Metal castings. How do you make the original pattern and make it big enough so when the metal shrinks, it shrinks to the right size? How do you cast it, finish it, gold leaf it, and get it on the hearse? That was just one thing.

We built that whole thing off of a single photograph. There were no records, plans, or blueprints.

When the railroad sent the hearse to Springfield, the bill of lading said “The wheels on this vehicle are oversized. They are 56 inches in diameter instead of the standard 50, $1.50 extra.” That gave us the scale. I scaled the whole thing off of the rear wheels.

This image, taken in 1865 in Springfield, Illinois, is the only known photograph of the hearse used for Abraham Lincoln

ERIC: I worked with four historians and would get on the phone at the end of the day to check in and they would say where I nailed it, or where things needed to be lighter or heavier—and to them, all the changes they were asking for were easy!

Woodturner Eric Hollenbeck puts the final details on the hearse last week before it is shipped to Arizona for painting.

The final project after other team contributions were brought together

CHRISTINE: What did you learn from this project?

ERIC: Working with vets gave me part of my life back that was taken from me. The American Indians got it right. They knew, just like the VA, that it took two years to train a villager to become a warrior. But they also knew that it took 1-2 years to train a warrior to become a villager again. When the young warrior came back, he was not allowed into the village. He was met by an old warrior outside the community. For a year or two, they would make circles around the village, smaller and smaller until they brought him back home again.

That’s what the military can’t get their heads around today, and the work I’m essentially doing with them now, in projects like this.

Here Eric shares how his intelligence between Orientation and Tools connect. He’s a master wood turner and historic preservationist, not a handyman. He organizes and connects to a project in a way that emphasizes the details, bringing a heightened awareness, authenticity, and quality to his work. While he revised his interpretation in collaboration with historians and built custom tools to create unique molds and parts for the hearse, he never changed his fundamental stance toward woodworking.

Eric is guided by quality, aesthetic, meaning, and challenge. He arranges his work and his life to achieve these in a way that ensures consistency in his results. And he defines that consistency. Some work he does over and over (such as millwork), other projects (like the hearse) are opportunities of a lifetime. Small or large, Eric uses his Experience to create and judge the work he does.

Eric’s aesthetic, his choice in tools, and his drive to engage in challenging projects just beyond his level of skill influence how he goes about his work. He didn’t invent the windows, doors, cabinetry, decorative items, or wrought ironwork he produces, he interprets them. Reconstructing Lincoln’s hearse using the measurement from a wagon wheel highlights perfectly one of  the paradoxes of craftsmanship: how expertise and ingenuity relate (see figure 3.1). This relationship is shown through various contradictions of his story. He is true to his values and the skills he knows. He won’t compromise on quality work. In parallel, he employs ingenuity to produce signature qualities he wants in all of his work. For example, he’s developed a craftsman’s apothecary where he boils the essence from redwood, black walnut, amaryllis, and iron oxide to make his own varnishes, stains, and paints.

Where a musician has scales and a painter has a palette, Eric has wood. He uses mostly redwood, but also oak and birch. Based on his training, Eric cuts these into basic sizes and gets to work. He uses his theory of the particulars of wood—how it bends, manages heat, negotiates water, or absorbs stress—to imagine the possibilities for a project. Then, to produce each piece he has to predict how it will look. He uses those predictions and techniques to make the piece he wants, then recognizing the look, textures, smell of the wood or stain he wants when he achieves the finished product. This is Experience in action.

We might take it for granted that Eric has this applied ability. After all, he’s had well over than 10,000 hours working with it. Every woodworker has to be well-acquainted with the qualities and temperament of wood; without that knowledge, he would have to rely on books to tell him what to look for. However, the number of woodworkers that achieve Eric’s level of integration between creativity and skill are few. He does what he does well. He’s gotten very good at it and as a result, people have beaten a path to his door. Those people include U.S. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, who was so impressed by what he observed that he included Hollenbeck as a featured participant in the 1993 timber summit in Portland, and President Clinton, who honored him in his 1994 Earth Day speech.

Even as Eric is creating a simple window, he is doing so to his own sense of aesthetic. His applied experience has enabled him to create his own standards. Arriving at this level in his craftsmanship, he has fully integrated expertise and ingenuity in his work.

Figure 3.1 shows this relationship. The forces that drive expertise are conventional. Expertise relies on predictability, standards, refinement, and controlled action. In contrast, ingenuity is driven by risking some of what you know in order to learn something new. Craftsmanship is propelled by the back-and-forth of these two competing forces.

Working within the paradox and tension of change, Eric relies on traditional tools and skills from the past, established by others. And, he follows his own aesthetic and standards for quality. He reads a lot of books. And, he operates instinctively solving problems by improvising his own tools. He follows classic technique, while also spontaneously responding to his materials and project constraints. He uses varnish as they have always been used. And, he creates his own version of them, to his specifications. The knowledge of others has been incorporated in his foundation and he has built on top of that. If you really want to understand woodworking, Eric suggests, you have to “get in the shop” but he also embodies a more philosophical approach.

ERIC: … the answer to everything is floating around us all the time. Kind of like droplets of water in a mist. For those who are open enough thinkers, without boundaries, without walls, we can reach out of and grab those little pieces of answers—those drops of mist—and act on them. And I truly believe that. If you can get yourself focused enough and eased up enough to be receptive, you can reach out and grab the answer to the problem at hand.

The constant interplay between expertise and ingenuity, or in Eric’s case traditional approaches and creative workarounds, contributes to the quality in his work and what we recognize as craftsmanship in the work of others. It is not a skill easily obtained. For Eric, it has taken a lifetime of effort, belief, failure, improvisation, creativity, and perseverance.

[1] A gyppo logger (sometimes spelled “gypo logger”) is a lumberjack who runs or works for a small scale logging operation that is independent from an established sawmill or lumber company. They avoid borrowing money, make do with the resources available, avoid hiring help he does not need and remains willing to adapt to whatever circumstances dictate.

This post is part of a series #LookToCraftsmen set for publication in 2019.

Showing Up

Master sculptor Louise Pentz discusses the importance of presence while developing an ongoing practice toward mastery.

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Photo Credit: Breakwater Studios

How did I think she became a Master? Honestly, I thought that one could be considered a Master Ceramicist after throwing a number of pieces for about 10,000 hours, or be naturally gifted with one’s hands, or have an exceptionally strong back—but that is not the case. To officially become a Master in a trade you are generally deemed so by a current Master, or recognized by peers. The process is different in every medium, unique to different regions, and distinct in different countries.

In addition to her education at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Louise also studied at the University of Regina, Sask.; Metchosin School of the Arts, B.C.; the Instituto de San Miguel, Mexico; smoke firing in Phoenix, Arizona as well as a variety of courses and workshops at NSCADU. She has traveled throughout Europe and Japan studying ceramics and particularly clay vessels as funerary containers.

Louise’s work can be found in both public and private collections throughout Canada, the U.S., and France. Her sculptural works have recently been added to the permanent collections of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia and St. Francis Xavier University Art Gallery.

Her work has been endorsed with grants from the Canada Council, the Nova Scotia Dept. of Tourism, Culture and Heritage and she received Federal funding to travel to France to attend an opening which included her work. In 2014 her exhibition, entitled RESTRAINED, was nominated for the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterworks Award.

Louise traded a successful, stable career producing functional pottery for creating sculptures of female figures that explore the injustices women face. After success in several shows, she is now focused on learning how to draw. A master ceramicist, her deepest knowledge is in clay.

Louise has a calm, soothing voice. Her unhurried, deliberate cadence is similar to how she bonds with her media.

LOUISE: The clay is soft when I put it on and I can only go so far each day. Then I have to let it set up and get firm. Clay is probably the most demanding of materials because it dictates what you can and cannot do, and your timeframe. I can’t pull a 24-hour session like I might in textiles. It is frustrating and also a very, very good thing. After 40 years, I just know the pace. It’s not a bad thing to stop before you’re ready. Very often you come back and realize it’s finished, whereas if I had stayed on it I would have overworked it or finessed the detail, which often kills it.

Giving in to control can be a limiting factor in our lives and our work. Craftsmen consciously let go of controlling the outcome. Relying on their skills and experience, their awareness is high and their self-judgment is low. They are willing to trust in their ability to respond to whatever comes next. In that state of readiness, they feel they are on to something. Relying on multiple kinds of intelligence, they engage risk and court surprise. This helps them invite uniqueness into their work they could never deliberately achieve on their own.

LOUISE: Especially working with faces, you want to get it real and get it right—all that left brain stuff. The imperfections don’t deny the material. That ragged edge, that unfinished, un-finessed area works very well. It’s rough looking clay, but your brain reads that as a shoulder because that is where a shoulder ought to be. Similarly, half of a face is all you need sometimes. The thing you gain with experience is the ability to edit.

We all want to ‘get it right.’ “Sometimes,” Louise says, “distance from your work is the best thing you can do.”  Distance, pace, responsiveness all help keep control at arm’s length.

Call It Craftsmanship

In analyzing expertise and their approach to working—and from there, how their work reflects them as individuals—I wanted to understand an approach to working that’s possible across all fields, a way of working that helps people wrestle with the ungainliness of the beginner. I wanted to understand a way of working that helps people grapple with the uncertainty, change, external expectations, uniqueness, and complexity of organizational growth—while focusing on work that matters. I wanted to understand how people across a variety of disciplines—from blacksmiths, entrepreneurs, to teachers, even multinationals—can effectively apply their uniqueness to a problem at hand, using work as their medium for creative self-expression.

This way of working—call it craftsmanship.

Craftsmanship is rooted in certain qualities. Louise shared qualities as observance of details in the medium of clay, responsiveness toward the time constraints of her medium as she allowed her work to set; and, engagement in the dynamic of manifesting her initial vision while being open to serendipity and experimentation. She can read about technique in a book. But to move from novice to master, she needs to practice these qualities and interpret them herself. If she remains focused, she can use her increased awareness to respond effectively, increasing her skills through attention to improvement. She’s not unique in her challenge. Every student of a medium faces the same challenges as they leave templates and routine behind. They engage the struggle of tapping their innate ingenuity in order to become creative practitioners in their medium.

Louise aides her own awareness as she shifts from production work, to clay sculpture, learning to draw. Expertise from one medium guides the beginner in the new medium.

LOUISE: I loved sculpting clay. But as with the production pottery, with my last show, there was something inside that said, ‘That’s it. I have nothing more to say.’

All my clay equipment is gone, my house is for sale, and now I’m drawing. It’s like I’m in kindergarten and I’m learning a new language. Whether I will ever do anything that resonated as much with an audience as the sculpture did, I have no idea. But I’m in a place of being a learner again, and 95% of what I do is disposable and destroyed because I’m learning. I feel vulnerable and excited.

One can’t help but make a connection between the clay she is working with, and her own personal development. She has explored the practical nature of the craft of making production pottery. Wanting to bring more of herself to her work, she felt moved to create sculptures of female figures that explore the injustices women face, finding her voice of protest for the way women are treated in the world. After success in several shows, she has moved on to drawing. Louise has explored her voice from multiple stances. In many ways, she is the clay she is working.

When we give up some of what we know in order to learn, as Louise has done, we are vulnerable. Fear, anxiety, or embarrassment create a state of self-absorption. This distracts from the ultimate goal of seeing what will happen. We must hope for mistakes to teach us.

Hope for mistakes? Must we? Yes. Mistakes mean we are out of control, being risky, and dancing with fear. Mistakes give us a compelling reason to learn.

LOUISE: You have to do the work. You have to show up and put in the time. Then gradually the flow happens.

You have to make a lot of mistakes. You’re hoping for the mistakes, because that is usually where things are most exciting. Too much control and the outcome loses some of its essence. It ends up just like everyone else’s outcomes. Average. Within the norm. Mainstream.

Often when I create a piece I’ll build it and it will be good, but not very exciting. It’s good, technically, but I wonder ‘how I can give life to this piece?’

I start to break it apart. I might hit or punch the clay with a stick or I’ll rip a piece off of the side. All of those gestures make the piece stronger and better in my eyes.

Some people might think that Louise’s focus on destroying refinement extreme or merely artistic license. However, she knows giving up an attachment to perfection she will reach new thresholds in her knowledge.

Giving up some of what we know in order to risk learning something new—that is the practice. Craftsmanship is not a result; it is a process (of learning by doing). Craftsmanship is about standing apart from the mainstream, by standing out through unique, quality work.

LOUISE: They are a surprise; the audience has to participate in the finished work. I haven’t told them every single thing about this woman. They have to fill in pieces that are not there.

‘What’s the least amount of detail I need to put into this object to say what I want to say?’ The work is an old woman, ethnic. She’s thoughtful, expressive–that’s all I want to say. I don’t need to finesse it to high realism in order to give that expression or convey that information. The parts that are left out become symbolic of vulnerability, of generation and degeneration, of life’s hard blows and tough experiences. It’s the human experience in not finishing the piece, but editing it.

Our natural tendency is to be judgmental and controlling. This has two negative consequences: we are less happy and our work is mediocre.

As a master craftsman, Louise is describing to me what is important about her work. She’s telling me the what, why, and how, of the skills she has mastered and those she is learning. She is, in fact, describing opposing forces of control and openness that she needs to achieve what virtually all the craftsmen interviewed for this book referred to as a “meditative state.” It takes time to achieve and to trust, it cannot be flipped like a switch. We learn like this in a variety of disciplines, from software coding to jewelry making. Masters transfer skill, know-how, perspective, and commitment needed to achieve advanced performance, and students try to absorb the lesson.

The pursuit of this kind of learning, versus simply copying a template, isn’t a direct path. The payoff is not always obvious in practice.

Craftsmanship is often written about. Books with Craft of in the title imply the promise that they’ll explain how to achieve good craftsmanship. Yet, they tend to raise more questions than answers. No two even agree on what ‘craft of’ really means. Applicable across so many disciplines, the execution of craftsmanship is hit or miss.

When we do recognize good craftsmanship, the discussion of it is challenging for a master to communicate to a novice. This difficulty is evident in Louise’s descriptions of her work. She attempts to describe the feel she has for her work by referencing that “after 40 years she knows the pace” given the medium’s constraints. She describes her sense of immediacy by embracing the medium’s constraints and using them to assist her own self-editing. She then connects these experiences to qualities her sculptures exhibit so she can use this connection to meet a new threshold of performance. If she misses the integration of practice, perspective, feel, immediacy, and focus she can’t achieve the pace necessary to create within the constraints of the clay. Without the incorporation of these elements, the craftsmanship to which she aspires cannot emerge.

This post is part of a series #LookToCraftsmen set for publication in 2019.