Finding a Way

There is a phrase I use quite often when talking about Mat: he’ll find a way.

It probably sums him up better than almost anything else.

Mat didn’t come to his work through art school or formal training. He struggled academically and has always learned differently. Give him something to read and follow step by step and he’ll probably lose interest. Give him a material, a machine, a problem to solve or an idea that might work, and he can disappear into the workshop for hours.

Almost everything he knows has been self-taught, through perseverance, experimentation and an awful lot of trial and error.

In many ways, I think those early struggles shaped the maker and artist he has become.

Starting with what we had

The beginnings of Why Not Wood were fairly humble.

There wasn’t the money to buy every tool or piece of machinery that would have made life easier. Mat worked with what he had, adapted things, reused things and found alternative ways of achieving what he wanted.

Sometimes that was through necessity. But over time, it became part of the way he thinks.

Mat can look at an object and see something completely different from its intended purpose. Something discarded or seemingly insignificant can become a tool, a texture, a jig or the starting point for a completely new technique.

I have learned not to ask, “What on earth are you keeping that for?”

There is usually a reason. Although occasionally, I maintain, there really isn't.

That reuse-and-repurpose mentality remains very much part of Mathew Gardner Studio. Having better equipment doesn't mean losing the ingenuity that got us here.

A workshop that has grown with him

This year has marked quite an important moment for us.

After years of building the business, watching every penny and gradually investing where we could, we have finally been in a position to make a significant investment in new workshop machinery.

For us, that means far more than simply having some shiny new equipment.

There have been times along the way when finances were incredibly tight. Like many small creative businesses, we've had to make decisions about what we could afford, what could wait and what we could somehow manage without.

So being able to invest properly in the workshop feels like a milestone.

The new machinery won't change the way Mat thinks or makes. What it will do is give him greater freedom to explore those ideas. It will allow him to prepare and manipulate timber in ways that weren't previously possible in his own workshop and, hopefully, push the work further again.

And knowing Mat, he'll probably find some completely unintended uses for the machines too.

Rarely a plan

One of the things people might be surprised to learn is that Mat very rarely starts with a detailed plan for a piece.

This is something that, as the organised half of Mathew Gardner Studio, I occasionally find challenging!

He works intuitively. An idea might begin with the timber, a shape, a texture, an unusual material or simply a thought he wants to explore. From there, the piece develops through making.

Perhaps that's also why natural timber suits him so well.

Wood doesn't arrive perfect and uniform. It has grain, movement, splits, inclusions, imperfections and its own history. Mat doesn't necessarily see those things as problems to remove. Very often they determine what happens next.

There is a freedom in the material and a freedom in the way Mat works, and somehow the two seem to understand one another.

What happens if...?

That curiosity is still driving the work.

Recently, Mat has become increasingly interested in bringing copper into his pieces.

Naturally, this hasn't involved signing up for a course and following somebody else's method.

Instead, he's teaching himself.

He's experimenting with how copper moves, how it can be shaped, textured and coloured with heat, and how it can sit alongside timber without either material overwhelming the other. There have already been successes, failures and plenty of “well, that didn't work” moments.

But that's the point.

He isn't trying to become a traditional coppersmith. He's learning enough about the material to discover what he can do with it.

Often a failed experiment leads somewhere completely unexpected. A technique developed for one purpose becomes useful for another, and gradually it joins the collection of knowledge Mat carries into the next piece.

It's unconventional, but then so is he.

Intuitive. Integrated. Resolved.

Perhaps this is why the three words we now use to describe Mat's work feel so appropriate.

Intuitive. Integrated. Resolved.

The beginning is intuitive. There may not be a drawing or a fixed destination.

The making is integrated. Years of self-taught skills, techniques, mistakes, experiments and discoveries come together, often without Mat consciously separating one from another.

But the end must be resolved.

For someone who can be incredibly free in the way he gets there, Mat is uncompromising about the finished piece. If something isn't right, it doesn't leave the workshop. He will remake, rethink, sand, carve, scorch, turn or alter something until he is satisfied that it is finished.

That integrity matters enormously to him.

And somewhere behind all of this...

...there's me, Lindsay.

If Mat is the instinctive one, I'm probably safe in saying I'm the organised one.

While he's disappearing down another creative rabbit hole, I'm generally working behind the scenes trying to turn all that creativity into a functioning studio—organising exhibitions, updating the website, photographing pieces, answering emails, packing the van and occasionally reminding Mat that there is an actual deadline.

Sometimes my job is to encourage the idea.

Sometimes it's to rein him in.

And sometimes it's simply to work out how on earth we're going to explain his latest creation to everyone else.

Mat makes the work, but Mathew Gardner Studio has become very much our shared journey.

Looking at the new machinery in the workshop now, it's difficult not to think about how far we've come from those early days of making do with what we had.

But I hope we never lose that part of the story.

Because the most important thing the new equipment gives Mat isn't an easier way to make things.

It gives him more possibilities.

And if there's one thing I've learned from watching him work, it's that when Mat sees a possibility, he'll find a way.

Lindsay