LOCALadk Magazine

Fall 2014 19 LOCALadk Jay has been doing this work for more than two decades now. Many friends and clients have urged him to advertise more, to update his website – at the very least to put up a sign at his workshop! But despite his neglect to market, Jay does not lack for business. It might be that being a little hard to find and rough around the edges, is what works for him, he says with a smile. If this is true, it would be quite fitting. Jay's work celebrates wood in its natural form and helps us discover beauty where we may otherwise overlook it. It seems only right that finding his studio and discovering his work should be the same way: like finding a treasure, hidden in plain sight. Steve Bowers On a quiet street in Keene Valley, among the charming store fronts and well-tended lawns, a black pirate flag flaps in the wind. It hangs from a porch crowded with wood and branches and roots and pieces of furniture in various states of finish. This is Bald Mountain Rustics, the workshop of Steve Bowers. Come in, look around, make yourself comfortable. If Steve is not there at the moment, he'll be back soon and you'll know him when you see him. Steve has a robust beard, long pony tail, and blue eyes sharp and clear as the sky. The Hawaiian shirt he may be sporting only enhances the impression that he just stepped off the raging seas or, perhaps, out of another century – one of birch bark canoes and raccoon skin hats, where the hewing of logs into furniture was more a matter of function than of art. Steve Bowers makes Adirondack Rustic furniture. He can and does build all manner of things: game tables with the chess board built in, for example, or the woodwork for entire bathrooms, as he did for Lake Placid Lodge. But what he's focused on and become known for over the past decade are his chairs. Specifically, his reinterpretation of the Westport Chair. Steve became interested in rustic furniture in the late 90s, after visiting the Rustic Furniture Fair at the Adirondack Museum. He was living in New Jersey at the time and worked in corporate marketing, having previously run a business in landscape architecture. Steve started making rustic-style furniture on the side, but in 2003 he and his wife Kathy decided to move to Keene Valley and start making furniture full-time. Just one year later Steve was invited to exhibit for the first time at the Rustic Furniture Fair, where he's appeared annually ever since. Steve decided to focus on chairs in part because, as he explains it, he looked around at what other rustic artisans were doing and saw that while many were making cabinets and tables, fewer did chairs. The original Westport Chair is a simple outdoor lounge chair with straight single-board back and seat and armrests wide enough to accommodate both a person's arms and the beverage of his or her choice. The story is that Westport Chairs were designed (in Westport, N.Y.) specifically to perch on sloping lawns overlooking Lake Champlain. Steve honed his skills making Westport chairs, but soon departed from the traditional design into more fanciful terrain. He started incorporating roots and wood in its natural shape, with curves and knots in tact. His pieces became quite rustic and elaborate, but still maintained the basic geometry of the Westport Chair, which makes for a very comfortable seat. Steve's reinterpreted Westport Chairs have proven popular. He now works with John Monroe, also a local artist, who helps with the time- consuming production and also the elaborate twig embellishments. Some of the chairs produced at Bald Mountain Rustic are 80 hours in the sanding alone and cost more than $10,000.

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