Marion: Creating out of wood
Staff writer
When Tom Neff’s granddaughter asked him to make her a wooden bowl, he didn’t think it would lead to nearly 40 more orders.
“One turned into about 40,” Neff said. “I just kept going, and I started doing other things.”
Before long, a rack in the garage of his home at Marion County Lake was filled with handcrafted items. Not knowing what he’d do with them, someone suggested Neff take his work to Art in the Park.
This Saturday and Sunday, Neff will return to Marion’s Central Park for the 48th annual event, bringing at least eight tubs and boxes filled with more than 40 of his handcrafted pieces, including wood-carved bowls, crosses, flag cases, wine bottle holders and charcuterie boards.
This year will be Neff’s second as a vendor at Art in the Park. Over two days, musicians will perform, and more than 100 vendors will set up shop in Central Park, city economic development director Megan Jones said.
While most of the items sold are handcrafted, organizers in recent years have opened the event to commercial vendors as the number of handmade exhibitors has declined.
Judy Christensen, who helped plan and organize Art in the Park when it began in the late 1970s, said the change reflected a broader shift in how people spend their time.
“It’s just a sign of the time,” she said. “People aren’t staying home and crafting. They have to get real jobs.”
When the event began, organizers wanted it to coincide with Hillsboro’s Arts and Crafts Fair, which had been running for eight years. They made Art in the Park a two-day event in hopes of encouraging visitors who came to Marion County on the third Saturday of September to stay a little longer.
At first, the decision was met with some hesitation.
“To do it the same day as Hillsboro … was a bit of a conflict at the time because people didn’t quite see the vision,” said Margo Yates, former Marion community enrichment director. “But it actually benefits everybody. . . . People drive quite a bit to the shows because they know they can go to both of them and make it worth the trip.”
For Neff, though, the appeal of making things by hand has little to do with festivals or selling his work.
At 63, he has spent much of his life around woodworking. Growing up in his grandfather’s and dad’s workshops at Oberlin, Neff learned early what kind of satisfaction comes from taking a piece of wood and turning it into something useful, or firewood if there’s no practical use.
He jokes that he can’t remember when he started. One thing he does remember is the work of his dad. He still keeps a 45-year-old bowl that his dad, who died 4½ years ago, made out of hedgewood.
“I found it and brought it back here,” Neff said. “I put it on my lathe [and] can’t touch it. It is so hard my chisel won’t budge.”
These days, most of Neff’s woodwork comes from native species, including cedar, pine, and cherry. He also works with zebrawood and ebony, and does all the milling himself.
No two pieces begin the same way. Sometimes pieces of wood left over from one project are enough to make several more. That unpredictability is part of Neff’s fun.
“Every time you throw a chunk there, you don’t know what shape it is going to end up in,” he said. “You just start, and then wherever it goes, it goes.”