When I was a kid at Girl Scout camp, during one of those typical “what does your dad do?” conversations (of course, it was understood that our moms didn’t do anything!) my tent-mate, Henrietta, told the group her father was a spatula handle maker. No one batted an eyelash. My only thought at the time was, oh yeah, I guess someone has to make those things. Now such a declaration would seem preposterous. Spatulas, let alone spatula handles are just cranked out by the zillions, machine-molded with seemingly no human intervention, void of character and personality. No one’s dad makes those one at a time, much less, for a living! In my “Widget” series, I’m recollecting Henrietta’s dad, the individual maker, leaving his own mark on the world of small things. By marrying a gadget from a couple generations ago with my own hand-carved interventions. I’m stretching definitions of function, celebrating invention, putting in a plug for the quirkiness of the individual and thumbing my nose at mass production, big box distribution and mindless consumerism. I’m also just having fun!
