Formal Education

 

            My degree from Drew University, Madison, NJ is in Economics. Of the social sciences, it seemed the most practical to me. I thought a benefit of a degree in economics was that I could fashion a career that might allow me to contribute to my broader sense of community, i.e., making a difference in the world. For me that meant building. My dream at that time was building low cost, yet high quality, housing. I would need to learn the world of non-profit economic development first. What I did not realize then, was that although it was building in the broad sense, it was not the hands-on making that I truly craved.

 

             One of my first jobs in the economic development realm was as project manager for a non-profit, called the Montclair Mainstreet Project. Part of my duties included being a liaison to all the business owners up and down Bloomfield Avenue in what is Montclair’s largest business district. One of those business owners was a woman named Marie Guarino. It is at this time that I started to become enthralled by Fine Woodworking through books and magazines. I shared this with Marie one afternoon and she mentioned that her husband, Glen was in fact a fine woodworker specializing in sculptural woodwork and taught woodworking full time.

 

            Marie introduced me to Glen. Glen is one of the most generous human beings I have ever met. He invited me to help him out at night on his own work and attend some of his classes at Kean College. Glen went on to help connect me to the network of high-end custom woodworking shops in Northern New Jersey in the eighties. All these years later he is still a cherished friend and mentor. He also still produces incredibly beautiful furniture that features sculptural shapes and sensuous surfaces often in exotic hardwoods.

 

             After some soul searching, I made the jump out of the world I knew and into a new world of building, craft, and art. I landed a job at a high-end custom cabinet shop in Montclair. It was the end of the high-flying eighties and people were still ordering lots of complicated and often expensive furniture that would be custom made for their homes or apartments in Manhattan. Cozzolino Brothers built all manner of this kind of furniture and added the element of super high-end finishes to their pieces. This was the first job I had in this new land.

 

            By far the best thing about my first job in a shop producing high end custom furniture was meeting Frank Pollaro. At Cozzolino I was initiated into the complex mechanics of custom woodworking, but it was beginning my friendship with Frank that has had the greatest lasting impact.

 

            It was 1989 and Frank had found shop space in a group of 100-year-old industrial buildings in East Orange. He asked me to share some of his newly acquired space for my own one-man shop. Even at the early age of twenty-two, Frank had a unique confidence and command of craft; and we both shared a particular kind of ambition to see how far we could take our love of making and building.

 

            While still working at Cozzolino and before Frank approached me to move my shop in next to his, I had rented space in Newark’s Ironbound District. I encountered some challenging things in that first shop, but on the plus side I could watch the sunset over the open skies by Newark Airport-and could see the planes coming and going from my vantage point.

 

            Despite some of the advantages to that Newark shop, it did not take me long to join Frank. So, I packed what machines and tools I had been able to scrape together up to that point and moved into space adjoining Frank and his whole crew of cabinetmakers. I not only got a bit brighter and nicer space but became part of a whole consortium of other young craftsman. That exposure proved incredibly influential in shaping the artist and craftsman I have become.

 

            Pollaro today is one of handful of shops that produce the finest handmade furniture in the world. That sounds like hyperbole, but once you walk through the doors of Pollaro’s Hillside, NJ location its unique status is apparent.

 

            It was my association with Pollaro that allowed me to work on an elaborate marquetry project that celebrated Jim Hensen. We inlaid Jim’s earliest characters into a three-sided desk for Hensen’s New York headquarters. A few years later I would part of a team working on Steinway art case pianos. I produced several marquetry panels for Steinway Art case pianos while at Pollaro. I also had the chance to continually work with internationally acclaimed architects and designers.