When Ken Guenter and Cam Russell retired from Camosun in June of 2017, it was the end of an era for the college’s Fine Furniture program. Russell had spent 30 years crafting the program, with Guenter by his side for the final 17. A year (and an adjustment period) later, the two are collaborating again to organize Making It: A 30 Year Retrospective Celebration of Camosun College’s Fine Furniture Program, a celebration of the program that was such a huge part of their lives for so many years.
“Five days a week from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon,” recalls Guenter of the 10-month program. “We got to know our students pretty well.”
While Guenter admits it was a little odd at first having both himself and Russell step away from the program simultaneously, he found the transition from teaching to be natural.
“I left teaching and went back into my own studio,” says Guenter. “About 15 minutes ago I was busy oiling some stools I’ve been making for the exhibition coming up. So I’m back in my own studio building again, as is Cam, as well. We both went back into our own studios, doing what we were doing many years ago.”
This exhibition is the latest project Guenter and Russell have worked on after collaborating on a number of curatorial projects and exhibitions over the years, in addition to sharing the their teaching history. Making It showcases the work of graduates spanning from the beginning of the program to the latest grad class. “Chairs” is a theme that has been used consistently as a final project for Fine Furniture students over the years, so when Russell and Guenter decided to launch this exhibition, adopting this theme yet again seemed like a no-brainer. The two set out with the goal of trying to get someone from each graduating class to build some form of seating.
According to Guenter, they weren’t quite able to achieve that goal, as a lot of the graduates of the program have gone on to do other things outside of woodworking; however, by doubling up on a couple graduating classes, as well as contributing pieces themselves, Guenter and Russell have been able to secure almost 40 chairs. Current Fine Furniture instructors—including program graduate turned program leader Sandra Carr and tool room attendant Nathan Holder—have also contributed work to the exhibition.
With so many talented graduates out there, Guenter admits that creating the roster was one of the toughest things they had to do.
“How do you decide? We couldn’t invite everyone, that was almost 500 people,” he says. “We didn’t have room for almost 500, so we had to come up with some sort of criteria.”
Since the program hands out a number of awards every year, including one for top student and one for top design, the logical choice was to extend an invitation to the recipients of those accolades.
“We were pretty much looking for people who had won one or the other of those awards during the year,” Guenter explains. “They had proven themselves to be students who had excelled in the program.”
One of those students is 2018 grad Calvin Sytsma, who was announced as the winner of the current graduating class’ chair competition, giving him the opportunity to join the retrospective.
“I was very shocked about winning,” says Sytsma. “And I was very excited that my chair would be going in the exhibition.”
Sytsma says that his chair—named “Solid Flexibility”—is made of a solid piece of wood that is cut to flex when sat on, giving it ingenuity and a wow factor that landed him in the exhibition.
For Guenter, seeing all these pieces together is one of the things that he’s most proud of when he reflects on his time at Camosun.
“When you go to an exhibition, and some of your graduates are at the exhibition, and the work they do is so amazing, and so much better than anything you’ve done, that’s pretty exciting,” Guenter says with a laugh.
Guenter says that having students become the masters happens all the time. “We have graduates that come out of the program who have excelled and who are amazing at what they do,” he says.
And when those students become successes in the industry, Guenter is rewarded doubly.
“Cam and I always say one of our favourite things is when graduates get a hold of us because they need to hire people. That idea of graduates hiring graduates is something we’ve always been very proud of.”
Making It: A 30 Year Retrospective Celebration of Camosun College’s Fine Furniture Program
Various times and days, Saturday, July 14 to Saturday, September 22
Free, Legacy Downtown (630 Yates Street)
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