Before you pack two shopping carts full of mass-produced goods at IKEA, talk to Camosun Fine Furniture and Joinery program leader and instructor Ken Guenter. Guenter has been practicing the trade for over 30 years, and says that Camosun’s end-of-year fine furniture exhibition is a place where the future of the industry can congregate to make sure local businesses and tradespeople prosper.
“There are people within our community who are capable of making good quality furniture,” says Guenter. “You don’t have to go far away to buy your furniture; you can have it made for you locally.”
Guenter says one of the most rewarding moments for him as a teacher is when former graduates of the program hire students who have just finished the program. He says that happens a lot and creates a good sense of local community, but he adds that the journey for students can get frustrating at times, as he sees with these final projects.
“Sometimes people discover halfway through the process they don’t really like what they designed,” says Guenter. “Where it’s really exciting and really fun is that period from the sketching point to the completion of the model.”
There will be 18 chairs on display at the exhibit—which is free to the public to check out until Tuesday, June 27 at the Cedar Hill Recreation Centre—ranging from fairly straightforward bar stools to full-blown recliner chairs.
“One of the really fun things about this project is you would think, ‘Okay, make a chair,’ so someone will make a basic chair with four legs, some rails, and a back, but that never happens,” says Guenter. “We always have a few [students] who want to re-invent the concept of seating, or we have a few who want to take classic designs to make it their own, which is also really quite wonderful to see students do that.”
Camosun Fine Furniture and Joinery student Janson Chan’s chair, which is on display at the exhibit, was voted Best in Show by a panel of judges; along with the acknowledgement, Chan got $500, donated by the Vancouver Island Woodworkers’ Guild. Chan completed his first post-secondary education a few years ago; after working at a bank, where he realized the banality of ongoing business politics wasn’t for him, he landed in the Fine Furniture program, which he says he initially discovered in grade school.
“I re-evaluated my life, and said, ‘Hey, what do I want to do?’ Woodworking is what I really wanted to do when I was younger, so I re-visited that,” says Chan, who adds that he found out about Camosun through friends. “I applied and I met with Ken. I was hooked.”
Chan arrives as early in the morning as possible at Camosun’s woodworking shop, so that he doesn’t waste a minute of the day.
“I think one of the best things I’ve learned about this place,” he says, “is how much I don’t know.”
A Chair to Remember: Seating in Western Maple
Until Tuesday, June 27
Arts Centre, Cedar Hill Recreation Centre, 3220 Cedar Hill Road
camosun.ca/learn/programs/fine-furniture-joinery