The Last Five Percent
After long experience, I've learned that the last five percent of nearly any project requires ninety-five percent of the effort.
I try to put that last ninety-five into every piece I make.
Early Days
A photo of Lon chopping firewood outside the two-room cabin where he, his brother, and father mined for gold in rural northern California.
No electricity, no plumbing, no phone, no worries.
Here to There
When not chopping wood, carrying water, mining, or fishing, Lon attended this one room schoolhouse.
Between there and his current home and studio in Louisville, Kentucky, Lon has been (in no particular order) a sailor, electronics technician, university instructor, cabinet maker, machinist, industrial designer, and artist.
It's a Dirty Job
Cutting, grinding, sanding, polishing, drilling, hammering - gotta love it.
Lon enjoys working with a wide variety of materials. His experience from high-tech (several years at The University of California at Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) to extreme low-tech (whacking away on chunks of stone and wood) lends Lon's pieces a unique and distinctive style.
"I've worked on everything from particle accelerators to backpacks for The North Face and signs for The Gap. The work I do now is the culmination of that experience. I'm still trying to get better at it."
Here he is grinding and shaping one of his stone vanities.