Today we’d like to introduce you to Lacy Snapp.
Hi Lacy, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, you could tell our readers some of your backstory.
Woodworking is a trade passed down in my family for generations. I started because I wanted to learn the craft from my father and grandfather, but it was exciting when I developed the skills to take designs I imagined and make them an actuality. It opened up a new world of creative expression. I’m enamored by how unique each board of wood is, especially those with particular grain patterns, knots, and other marks of character like bore bee holes or wormholes. When working with wood, I love trying to learn its story and make something that will honor the one-of-a-kind material. I began as an apprentice in my dad’s shop (Old Farm Reclaimed Lumber). I was only doing the sanding work for his cutting boards at the start.
However, over time, I learned to use the machines requiring skill and technique, and I started to dream up my designs. I began my business, Luna’s Woodcraft, in 2016 and started vending local craft shows, festivals, and other pop-ups and doing custom work. In 2018, we added a laser engraver to the shop so I could start burning designs into my wood creations to add another layer of customization. This was an exciting development that took my art and expression to the next level. When the vending world stopped for a while because of the pandemic in 2020, I switched to making larger projects that required more time and attention, such as my large reclaimed mountain and abstract wall art designs. I am now a literature and writing teacher at ETSU, so woodworking is a side project. I’ve switched to doing month-long installations of my work at coffee shops or breweries, and I have a booth space at a local store in Johnson City, The Generalist, where people can shop my smaller designs year-round. My current obsession is making reclaimed barn wood wall art, especially those with quilt-patterned designs, which I’ve been submitting to larger venues such as museums so they can be viewed as large installations.
Alright, let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what challenges have you had to overcome?
Learning any craft or trade is not a smooth process. Any skill is challenging to master, and often, I have to think creatively to solve a problem of how to make something in the shop, especially when creating a design or template from scratch (using an idea I’ve cooked up in my mind). All of the machines I use have taken years to “master” to achieve the speed and quality I do now. The most significant thing to overcome is that not every day will be a good or productive day in the workshop. Some days, I come in with the best intentions but can’t find my rhythm. It’s frustrating to mess up, especially if you keep doing so in a single day. I’ve learned on those days to take a beat and switch up my project. I might spend my time organizing my wood stacks or workstations so I’m ready to start anew when I come in next.
Another “challenge,” perhaps, is just that my business is changing. When I was younger and liked to vend festivals, I’d spend hours packing up tubs full of my woodworking, packing the car, traveling to the event, setting up the tents, and using social spoons to talk to people all day. I love connecting with people through woodworking, but I’ve found that the vending process is more difficult for me than for someone who vends something like prints (in terms of packing and lugging around products). I’ve had to adjust to growing as an artist and saying “no, thank you” to having vending as the primary way I share my works. And that’s okay. I’ve been doing this for eight years now, so it’s okay that I prefer to hang up my work in a brewery for a month and walk away or to create custom pieces instead. It’s okay to make it’s okay to make large pieces that take longer to complete rather than being focused on a maximum amount of production for a single festival. I’ve had to learn to trust my growth and the process, and the most important thing is to make sure woodworking is exciting and enjoyable for me rather than feeling like a static job.
Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am a woodworker, and I specialize in using reclaimed materials. My father took down old barns in the East Tennessee area for years through his business, Old Farm Reclaimed Lumber, and saved them from being destroyed or burned due to the demands of urban sprawl. Reclaimed wood is my favorite material. On the outside, it’s rustic and has gristle. But, if you plane the wood down, there are fantastic grain patterns and unique character.
Further, the wood is old enough that the tree lived its life, was cut down and sliced into boards, and then lived another life as a barn. I like to think of my creations as giving the wood a third life, which will be treasured and appreciated as art on a wall or another functional design. I have so much respect for nature, so I like to give the wood the respect it deserves when handling it. Each board is unique and as metaphysical as this sounds, I enjoy finding a piece of wood and figuring out what special thing it could be that no other board could be. If I find neat knots, I might choose a laser engraving design to work around it. I also really enjoy making functional art. We all have things that hang on our walls, so I love creating pieces such as plant propagation stands, shelves, etc, that can serve a purpose in your home. I’m currently most proud of a giant quilt I made out of barn wood for an exhibition I helped put together: “Embodying Culture: Women in Appalachia” at the Reece Museum at ETSU. It features nine square quilt panels. In this series, I dreamed of making a quilt out of wood to take a traditionally female craft and put my spin on it, using the historically male craft of woodworking.
The panels are made out of repeating strips of wood. The chestnut, pink wallpaper, and white paint strips are pieces from an old Snapp homestead in Piney Flats made of American Chestnut. My grandfather, P.C. Snapp, recently passed away, so I wanted to include these as a tribute. The heart pine wood in this collection is also a tribute to my great-grandmother Juanita, which was used when my dad, my sister, and I handmade her coffin when she passed during my teens. The gray, brown, and black boards are un-planed barnwood. Much of the planed wood in this piece is what that barnwood is like beneath the surface. By using a single board in different ways, I wanted to show that things can be more than what meets the eye. Just as my identity is multifaceted as I embody my family memories and tradition, as well as the gender fluidity I feel as a person and artist, I wanted this piece to be interwoven from reusing materials to give the barnwood a new life in this piece, which is one way to both preserve it and make it new. I am also a poet and writer, and I often write about how the qualities of different types of wood remind me of important people in my life and ancestry. This installation embodies that and is a tribute to who I am, who came before, and who has influenced my journey. That sets me apart, perhaps, as an artist–that my craft is both ancestral while being made new and personal, and is often a response to the physical materials I encounter.
What changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
I’ve already mentioned this, but I will keep shifting towards making large, custom-reclaimed pieces rather than more frequently smaller items. I’m building my website for my writing and woodworking, and I want to switch exclusively to large installations or custom work that people will request via that portal. I’m transitioning to being more full-time in my teaching schedule. I also help organize literary events at ETSU and in my community for the Johnson City Poets Collective. I wear a lot of hats in my professional life, so my woodworking will be turning into a passion project rather than an everyday business. That’s not to say I’m giving it up! However, I will be more selective with what I make, and I plan to take on larger, more complicated pieces to push the boundaries of my art. I love my reclaimed work because it is a frustrating and exciting kind of puzzle to solve. It’s a strange balance of challenge and calm, and I can immerse myself in those projects rather than more tedious, repetitive work. I want to keep attempting designs that excite me to go in the shop rather than feeling too much like a chore, and I’m excited to finally know what those passion projects are at this phase in my craft.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lunaswoodcraft/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lunaswoodcraft/
