So when she asked you for it, you drew it out and sketched it?
BRANDEGEE: Yes. That’s one of those cases where something just pops into mind. It’s so instantaneous.

(L-R) Salvaged locust wood material;
Brandagee’s sketch for a sculpture.

It stops you in your tracks.
BRANDEGEE: You can’t describe how it happens. It’s just like an electric connection made there, and there it was. It’s all there in full flower. It certainly doesn’t happen that way all the time. A lot of the process is just sweating over ideas that you can’t quite get to work.

Tell me about the materials for your furniture. The wood comes primarily from antique cabins and barns?
BRANDEGEE: That’s it. Logs from 18th and 19th century log buildings, old fence posts, whatever old wood I found with marks of weather and hand tools.

In Western Pennsylvania where you own some land?
BRANDEGEE: Yes. All from Western Pennsylvania, although I’m finding some things outside, Southern Maryland, et cetera, that a wonderful picker brings to me nowadays.

And are you trying to extend the life, the use, of this wood in some way? Do you feel some affinity to this wood?
BRANDEGEE: In some ways, often what you do is construct a logical and plausible rationale for things that you suddenly started doing and you thought they were right. But you don’t necessarily have that rationale to start with. And I didn’t. I just thought, “Well, I’d like to make some good stuff.”

And you grew, would it be fair to say, a realization of more respect for the material as time has gone on? The wood?
BRANDEGEE: Sure. I had a sense of “God this stuff is gorgeous.” Those people who originally built it killed themselves getting these buildings together. A huge amount of work. Here’s a guy and his wife out in the middle of nowhere hacking down trees, chopping, using what is called the devil’s tool, an adze, which they swung between their legs to chip off pieces and flatten the side of a log. For all too many of them, it didn’t work very well because they chopped into their legs, also.

And these cabins and barns were originally built by whom?
BRANDEGEE: By settlers. Some of the cabins we’ve taken down were late 18th century. Most are 19th century. Our two cabins were both built around 1840, originally about five miles apart.

You don’t want this wood to die?
BRANDEGEE: Yes. There’s a great phrase that I’ve recently seen related to recycling. I think it applies here rather neatly. The word is “upcycling.”

Upcycling?
BRANDEGEE: Essentially it means taking something crudely used and making it into a more refined and more significant item. I’d say that that’s what happens when you take a log from an old log cabin wall that’s falling down, and turn that log into a piece of furniture that’s aesthetically and functionally satisfying.

Some artists believe that they have a relationship with their material, a kind of communication. Do you feel that you believe in this sort of connection with your materials?
BRANDEGEE: Absolutely. I look at the material in the same sense that I look at an antique, for texture, color, design, heft, weight, space, all the things that make up any kind of aesthetic input. When I look at that Windsor chair over there, I say that’s a great work of art. It was made around 1770 in Connecticut. It’s in its original mustard paint. The form is stunningly good. Windsor chairs are one of the great American products, incidentally. The energy of Colonial America and post–Colonial America is succinctly captured and communicated in a great Windsor chair.

Photo By Heather Mull

Do you ever find yourself entering a room — whether you’re looking at antiques, whether you are outside, whether you’re in a barn looking at wood — do you ever feel drawn to an inanimate object?
BRANDEGEE: Yes. I’m constantly looking at stuff, and every look brings to it a predisposition to make judgments about it. Every time I enter a new area, visually or experientially, my antennae go up. I make evaluations that are instantaneous, mostly non–conscious. Have you read the book called “Blink?” You would love it. It’s very much related to this discussion. The opening episode is about Thomas Hoving, who is from the Metropolitan Museum, seeing an extremely early piece of sculpture that had been examined by many experts and declared to be authentic. But Hoving took an instant look at it, and said it looks “fresh”. And two years later, after lots of squirming by the experts, it was recognized as being a fake. When you’ve been doing this and you have deep, rich knowledge that can somehow translate into instant judgment. As an artist, sometimes you know when something you do is really good. And another thing you do is not everything you’d want it to be. But you can’t always instantly tell. You can’t say automatically every time, here’s the thing I want to do to fix it. You just say, ugh. Or, yeah, it works. It’s good. You know it. It’s instantaneous. It’s a moment of insight that sometimes occurs.

Do you view preconceived notions of materials as a type of guide?
BRANDEGEE: There’s a whole area that I find very interesting that I want to write about at some point. I’m interested in the whole area of structure in both physical materials and conceptual mental work. I’m interested in how my conceptual road maps relate to my activities as a designer of furniture. And I believe there are concurrencies. I think there’s overlay, overlap. I think that organizing information is very much akin to organizing visual presentations of objects, like a piece of furniture, or a painting, or a sculpture.