Aspen Golann was intensely curious and determined from the start. At 8 or 9, she remembers leaving early for school to sketch an interesting house on her street. Inspired by Aspen’s determination, her art teacher volunteered to teach the young artist the fundamentals of forced perspective.

At an alternative high school in Massachusetts, Golann took graduate-level art classes on the side, studying life drawing (human figures), mostly because it was the hardest type of drawing. “I really like to throw myself into the deep end, into these humbling experiences,” she says.

After college Golann spent a few years teaching art at an alternative high school, much like the one she attended, and working on a farm part-time. When she became interested in weaving, she started at the beginning. She bought a sheep, learned how to raise it and shear it, then how to dye and weave wool, and finally, made her own fabrics.

While teaching art was fulfilling—“I love the idealism and intensity of high schoolers; it’s the perfect age for radical transformation”—Golann’s dream was to make things full-time. At 29, she decided to make it happen.

Attracted to the scale of furniture, and the depth and difficulty of the craft, Golann took a tour of Boston’s famed North Bennet Street School. “I thought, ‘This is it,’” she recalls. “‘I have a background in fine art, conceptual art, and design. I want to be around people who will push me to focus on my weaknesses.”

“NBSS let me go back to the woodworking source—as old school and essential as I could find—and let me progress rapidly,” she says. “They were there for me at every level.”

She arrived at NBSS not knowing what a handplane was, and left a star student, with an astounding portfolio of work that blends traditional forms with fearless invention and an artist’s eye.

Maintaining her artistic voice and integrity at a traditional woodworking school required some finesse. One trick was hiding her full intent until the very end of a project. On a required chair, she left a hole in the back splat, saying vaguely that she might put some burl there. After the project was checked off by instructors, she added the “spooky face marquetry” she had planned.

Golann’s other superpower was her overall energy and determination. She created an ambitious spreadsheet of projects, with specific skills each would cover. She was there waiting for the doors to open each morning, and was kicked out by the cleaning staff at night.

Her first case piece at NBSS made it into Fine Woodworking’s Gallery (FWW #275). To make a traditional sunflower chest her own, she had reconstructed and re-arranged the elements. The door panel was her first carving, a process she finds very related to drawing.

During breaks Golann added seminars and residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Anderson Ranch, and Penland School of Craft, “collecting skills so I could make more stuff. Traditional craft education can feel a little stifling for a weirdo like me,” she says. “I sought out places that reminded me to make things that are interesting, not just technically impressive.”

At Penland, she invented a unique enameling technique for the glass doors of the bookcase and the clock she built at NBSS. To create multi-colored patterns in a liquid material that must be fired in a kiln all at once—the colors change with repeated firings—Golann laid down blue tape, cut away one area at a time, brushed on a color, and let it air-dry before brushing on the adjacent one. To apply shading inspired by wood marquetry, she used an air brush she found discarded on a roadside.

The result is beautiful; the techniques revolutionary. Golann is working now to add similar effects to mirrored glass.

Upon graduation from NBSS, Golann committed herself to life as a full-time studio furniture maker. “I want to give myself the opportunity to fail—or succeed,” she says. Step one was a job as shop coordinator at Penland School of Craft, where she is solely responsible for rebuilding, tuning, and maintaining machines and hand tools, an essential skill for a woodworking pro.

Teaching is also part of the plan. This summer she will be teaching at Lie-Nielsen events and at Penland, and passing along her newfound skills in machine maintenance to volunteers at A Workshop of our Own, a female-centric program in Baltimore.

To her fellow pros and hobbyists, Golann recommends reaching outside traditional woodworking and making room for experimentation. “Playfulness is illogical and allows you to make big leaps,” she says. “Logic only gives you a slightly evolved version of something, not something totally new.”

_{Furniture in 2D. Golann made these whimsical drawings while a student at North Bennet.}