I design Adirondack chairs. These chairs "grabbed me"   long ago,   gently at first, when I copied one my father had built from a   kit he bought from Sears. Over the years, as I made and developed more   for myself, for friends, and then for customers, their grip on me has strengthened until now I am more theirs than they are mine.

I am naturally rebellious. Often I just don't like what is. And I am curious. So I ask, "How can it be better?" And I am "visual". I want a thing I design to be functional, of course (that is a given, something relatively easy to achieve), but also visually significant, dignified, arresting. It should be an end in itself, loved simply for what it is as well as for what it does. So I look at an existing design, and ask, "What if...?"   Then I build a new chair, or a model, or I manipulate a photo to create a new image, and this then becomes the new "what is."   Again, the question, "What if...?" (always this question). I get an idea. I make a change. Is it better? And so on, and on, and on. Here, there is constant change, newness, evolution, "becoming."    I am moving toward something (I don't know what). I'm getting closer (I think). I am an explorer. And I'm in accord with something (the process of life and being itself?) What could be better?

To some, this process might seem like drudgery. Sometimes-often-it is, and sometimes-often-it is an agony, especially when I am doing battle with my two principal demons: self doubt and the indifference of others. But often too it's a joy. And a spiritual    journey as well. At each stage , as each design is developed and concretized, I am changed: I gain new understanding, previous designs are seen from a different perspective, and new possibilities become apparent.

I do not and must not rely on the opinions of others in doing this-no focus groups here-but only on what my heart tells me (this is necessarily a solitary and lonely process). It is my faith-desperate hope?-that my efforts will resonate with some others. After all, do I not too love Greene and Greene, Wright, Stickley, Breuer, Eames and Le Corbusier, a fact giving me hope that my tastes are not solely my own.

I now turn the floor over to the designs presented here. They can speak for themselves.