Vince Skelly’s Favorite Items Are As Functional and Classic As His Wooden Sculptures

For woodworker Vince Skelly, his previous studio setup at his Claremont, California home wasn’t working out. "I was getting noise complaints from my neighbors because of my chainsaw so the city shut me down. I had to pack up and drive to abandoned lots, like turn off on mountain roads, just to set up my studio for the day," he says. Skelly eventually found a studio four months later in a nearby town but the noise complaints followed him there too, due to discrepancies in how the studio is zoned for manufacturing. Skelly has to laugh about it. "I’m learning something new about this every day. I just keep chasing this thing and it’s been kind of a nightmare to be honest," the self-taught artist says.

Ask fans of Skelly’s furniture pieces, which are essentially chunky sculptures carved out of wood, and they’ll likely say the chase is worth it. Skelly’s interpretations of chairs, tables, stools, and home objects are functional but beautifully imperfect. The pieces honor the natural quality of the lumber—the colors, lumps, roughness, crevices, and all—but it’s Skelly’s sculptural touch that makes each piece so artful. For instance, check out the mismatched legs on a Vince Skelly coffee table; one might be smoothed-out and bulbous while the contrasting leg is decidedly a harsh and angular zig-zag. But to create these types of stacked wooden sculptures, Skelly needs a space where he can go HAM with a chainsaw—and he’s still trying to figure that part out in his LA County suburban town where he moved to a year and a half ago from Portland, Oregon.

Skelly’s career has always leaned into a trial-and-error mindset so rolling with the punches is par for the course. When it comes to sourcing wood, Skelly drives around and salvages felled lumber or stumps from sides of the road, or he picks up free wood offered on Craigslist. "You get a lot of what we call ‘backyard wood’ that you can't have access to at the lumber store. Like, I’ll carve magnolia that came down in somebody’s backyard. Finding these different woods and trying new ones is still something that I’m really excited about."

As for using a chainsaw, Skelly says it took him 10 years to gain confidence in his abilities. "As any self-taught person will tell you, you make so many mistakes. But what I think is special about approaching something without formal training is that you can often find results that you wouldn’t have found had you been taught in an institution or something like that."

When it comes to the Millard Sheets-designed midcentury modern house that he shares with his wife, Skelly says he can’t go overboard with filling it with his own works because it’s a rather modest 1,400 square feet, two-bedroom space. Plus, the house itself is a marvel, especially amongst the residential homes on Skelly’s street. "The whole house is made out of concrete block so what shows through on the exterior shows through on the interior. There’s an intricate midcentury wooden screen, a floor to ceiling partition, that’s perfectly intact and hasn’t been damaged since 1949. I’ve examined it so many times and I can’t figure out how they made this. It blows me away."

Since there’s a limit to what fits in the house, Skelly recommends some of his favorite workspace essentials, like Birkenstocks, an Aesop balm, and his favorite chainsaw. "Remember to always inspect the log for nails or bolts or any metal because if you hit it with a chainsaw, it can kick back at you," advises Skelly. "I learned kind of the hard way and luckily I only hit little nails, but that’s just one of the cons with not having some instructor tell you what to look out for."

"There’s a page in this book on JB Blunk who’s a sculptor from Inverness, California and he primarily works in wood and ceramic. His house was filled with large wooden abstract sculptures and I was really struck by that. This whole experience opened up with this book."

"Best coffee maker for taste and as a design object." 

"Worn Path, my favorite local shop in Portland, makes these Nalgene water bottles. Five dollars from each water bottle sale is donated to Cascadia Forest Defenders as they are doing similar work to what the Cathedral Forest Action Group did in the same region. I have one for the shop and one for the car."

"Battery saws are finally starting to feel comparable with gas saws and I’m happy to go electric whenever possible. The main benefit allows me to carve indoors without any gas fumes. No noise complaints from the neighbors either."

"Birkenstock, whose core pillars are function, quality, and heritage, brings to market a premium version of their classic Arizona and Boston models. They asked me to participate in their launch campaign. A great shoe for wearing around the house."

"I’ve always preferred basic shirts and solid colors. I like this one because it’s a classic design and looks like it could have been worn by someone 100 years ago."

"Since I work with my hands all day they get pretty rough and dried out. This balm hydrates them without feeling greasy. I’ve never used an Aesop aroma I didn’t like, especially when it includes citrus."

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