Doug Stowe is an Arkansas Living Treasure who has lived in Eureka Springs for 50 years and been a woodworker for 49. The process of his woodworking career has flowed from craftsmen/artist to publisher to educator. He has published more than 100 articles and 15 books, and has taught classes from Clear Spring School to the University of Arkansas.
He credits his evolution to the three threads of his philosophy, Wisdom of the Hands.
First, our hands have the power to change lives, starting with our own. “All things have greater meaning when discovered directly, meaning hands on. Expertise is not needed. If alert and watchful, you’ll see the same thing, if you’re willing and able to look,” Doug said.
Second, understanding the beauty in the diversity of our woods and awakening others to this. “One of the things I’ve been interested in is the use of Arkansas wood to help people understand how beautiful our natural setting is and help cultivate their knowledge of our forest diversity,” he said. ‘We are deeply impacted by what we feel from what we see and touch in the natural world. We have a great responsibility to take care of this forest.”
Third, we are responsible to teach what we have learned. It is the intention of Doug’s art to reveal important concepts in ways the person experiencing the art understands. We learn when we teach. “We are all on the same path, but different places. That path calls for empathy and forgiveness for ourselves and others,” he said. “Our learning is accelerated when we see our extended selves in all things.”
Doug Stowe arrived in 1975, not yet a woodworker. “Throughout the years, Eureka Springs has not been a good place to make a living. It has been a good place to center a life. Plant your feet and stick around a while. Things have not changed in terms of finding a meaningful life.”
A bunch of young folks were gathering here in the mid ‘70s, sharing a common sense of hopefulness, and in those days, artists helped nourish each other. “As an artisan I was learning techniques to share lest they be forgotten,” he said.
He began his woodworking career in 1976 and has been self-employed ever since. Nationally recognized local artists Elsie and Louis Freund reassured Doug that his craft was an art. In 1977, he co-founded the Eureka Springs Guild of Artists & Craftspeople. The guild was absorbed into Eureka Springs School of the Arts, which Doug co-founded in 1998.
Doug selects his material from species of native Arkansas hardwoods. He said you can see all these native species growing together in the Ozarks, which is one of the reasons he moved here. He features 25 Arkansas hardwoods in a single miniature chapel piece titled, “Reliquary of Wood.”
He specializes in making boxes of many sizes and uses. The precision it takes to cut these accurately is easily overlooked – veneers with multiple woods, inlays with native stone, mitered corners for a seamless grain that wraps continually around into infinity, floating panels accentuated by sliding dovetail joints or various splines, and wooden hinges.
He is also a master artisan of wooden furniture. Cabinets, bookshelves, desks, tables and benches brought together by joinery such as mortise and tenon. He makes tools and the tools to make tools.
His creations are as useful as they are beautiful. He finds joy when mistakes make the project better. “A mistake is often the opportunity to learn something new, change the design and make something better. It’s not a reject, but something made more beautiful by what went wrong with it,” Doug said. He is a champion of lesser-known native species such as hackberry, sassafras and honey locust.
Doug had a project published in Woodworker’s Journal in 1995, and that led to publishing his own articles and books. “This was a period of accelerated learning and recognizing others as extended self was part of that learning,” he reflected.
Doug has been a longtime advocate for Slojd, a Scandinavian learning model that emphasizes hand and brain coordination. It is also the folk art of making useful day-to-day objects by hand.
He began his version of this philosophy with his Wisdom of the Hands curriculum at Clear Spring School in 2001. Wisdom of the Hands starts with the interest of the child. It builds from simple to complex while progressing from concrete to abstract. “Let’s talk about how to change school, how to empower children and how to become the teachers our children need and our futures require,” Doug said.
He once asked a class of children if they could name the maker of any objects in their home. Only one student responded by saying, “I still have the box I made in this class.” Doug seeks to turn the passive consumer into a creator. “Even in those early years, I was working against the trend of things made quickly and elsewhere,” he said.
Doug Stowe has three classes coming up at ESSA available to the public. Register through Eureka Springs School of the Arts, essa-art.org
- Making a Spoon Carving Knife, March 1- 2
- Scandinavian Bentwood Boxes, May 16 -18
- Building a Small Cabinet, June 25-29
His woodwork and books are available through DougStowe.com, and his treasure chest of self-publishing, at Wisdomofthehands.com or YouTube/DougStowe.