Kevin P. Clarke Woodworks

This mobile demonstration clinic was built to provide Forward, a company reconceptualizing health care by using, "Highly rated doctors using powerful technology to manage your health." The clinic provides an on the street venue for prospective clients to experience the medical office of the future.

Working with Brook Spreckman of Design Hutch we created phone rooms for technicians to provide support for their software. Upstairs, in the lounge area, we made 12' Elm tables for the staff to eat and relax.

Hog Island Oysters started a dinners series for private parties with tables from trees that I salvaged from across the street from their Marshall location.  I milled the wood in 2011 and made the tables in 2015. Four 9' x 3' x 2.5"-thick Cypress tables with Elm saw horse bases. 

In 2014 I heard from a friend that her pepper tree had died in her backyard and that she and her husband wanted to do something with the wood. I sent over an arborist who cut the tree into slabs and placed them under their house to dry.  I explained that it takes about a year for every inch of thickness to dry, so we would have to wait awhile to make a table.

I told them about some experiments I’d been doing, allowing wet wood to warp and deform as its inherent tension creates curving planes, and that I was using these forms in sculpture but wanted to incorporate them into furniture. They were all for it. The materials of this piece are Pepper Wood, Elm, Ebony and Epoxy. 

The built in dressers and cabinetry for Zero Cottage are made out of the reclaimed Douglas Fir found in the previous structure and the usually discarded CDX construction grade plywood used for concrete forms, exterior sheathing and sheer-wall. The drawer banks are made from custom laminations, exposed dovetail joinery and a Rubio Monocoat finish. 

More information can be found here http://www.dbarchitect.com/project_detail/153/Zero%20Cottage.html

White oak food bins for Local Mission Market with patinead steel face. 

Elm, Ash, Acacia and Cocobolo

This tiny kitchen was short on storage and had a 112º angle that made previous shelving ineficient and awkward. This hutch fits to the back of the wall to allow for mixers and blenders below, and the three sizes of mason jars, cups and plates above.

This bookshelf is for the room set aside from computers, laser cutters and CNC routers within Autodesk's Artist In Residence program. I was asked to create something to showcase objects of inspiration in a room for relaxation and contemplation. Instead of making the piece smaller so that the room's light switch remained outside of the shelving, this piece creates the space for interaction and invitation, an opening where a person will put their hand between the assemblage of pillars each time they enter or leave the room. The goal was to create a relationship between the resident makers and the structures which support objects of contemplation. It is about creating a space for history while embracing the act of shedding light and conserving energy.

This walnut and steel credenza was made for Rhodium Group, a consulting firm that specializes in market and policy research related to climate change. I suggested a graphic of CO2 emissions to illustrate the scale of the emergency. The graph is from 1800 to 2013. The patina on the steel top and sides is an imaginary landscape that is only visible while standing directly above or in front of it. From a distance it disappears.

Elm Slices are thinly cut, 16' x 2' x 1/4" pieces of wood with a burlap backing that can stand against a wall, fit in the corner of a room or hang from the ceiling. They are lightweight, solid and easily affixed to any surface.  Cut from wet, newly salvaged urban trees,  each slice is allowed to change shape as it dries, taking a shape that woodworkers normally try to to avoid. To build the angular stuff that becomes furniture we do everything we can to make and keep wood straight and flat, but these are different.

Each tree's unique reaction to the subtleties of its habitat, the changing directions of grain that come from forces exerted by branches, or a slope, or wind direction create varying densities and internal tensions, and have the potential unfurl a flat piece of freshly cut wood into a dynamic, warping plane that tells a story of topography, like landscapes created by geologic time that are an alternative to the map like information of a board. Ideally, these pieces show an aspect of time that goes beyond the counting of rings, and the marks and coloring of a two dimensional surface. I hope they show the third and forth dimensions of wood's honest transformation, from living thing, to record of life, when left to its own resources and unrestricted by the weight of the lumberyard and the heat of the kiln.

I made this table for two friends and wrote the story of where the wood came from on the bottom. It is acacia and padouk.

One of my favorite clients is Interior Design Fair. These are a just a few of the pieces I made for them, before they were taken to their client's homes and businesses.

(baby not included)

Sim Van der Ryn asked me to build him a side table out of a giant piece of live edge cypress for his home in Inverness. We went to my woodpile where he picked out the pieces, and I built it to his specifications. It was an honor to make something for such an incredible thinker and maker.

Tonight I had some time to start a table made from the elm I milled last year. It was one 2.5" thick slab that I split down in half to make 1" thick pieces. I think the legs will be saw horses again, but since this table is for fun, the legs could be anything.

As a material, Elm is unlike anything else I've worked with. It's incredibly strong, easy to carve and shape, but not brittle or dense. Most if all it's beautiful. So far it's my favorite wood.

[A few weeks later...]

Got back to working on the sawhorses that will be the base of this table this week. The legs tilt out and and away at 7 degrees. I like this better than the 15 degree sawhorses I made last year which had a larger footprint and were not any more rigid than these.

The Oak and Redwood Rocker is designed for nursing mothers dads holding a bottle and Grandparents to get in and out without plopping down and plenty of support on the way up.