Originally from Los Angeles, Laura Adams came with her husband Steven and their first child (then an infant) to Lopez Island, over twenty five years ago. Like many of us she wanted to raise her family in an environment that was based on values of health, simplicity and community. What she didn’t express, but what was gathered from an interview with her on a rainy Thursday morning in her wood shop, the last value on that list was creativity.
From early childhood Laura was always working on some creative project with her hands. Whether it was by her father’s side in his woodshop or with her mother sewing and weaving, there was some task, some project encouraging her how to conceive, explore and create. She always had an interest in wood and remembered, “every Christmas Dad would be out in the shop making something for us. I was influenced by watching him use his hands, and create things.”
As an adult, after exploring several other creative endeavors such as Black Smithing, stained glass, and weaving, Laura became more focused on what has become her local fame through the process of building her home. Her first creative project was an Appalachain Dulcimer that she built so she could sing lullabies to her young children (now 26 and 30), “it was so sweet and romantic,” she says beaming, in the way all mothers beam in memory of their now-grown little ones. But it was the need for cabinets and furnishings in her home that really got her motivated. Her work picked up over time thanks to friends who had a need for cabinetry and an appreciation for her signature, Arts and Crafts/ Shaker-influenced style.
It was after her children were grown that her craft became more of a profession. At the time Laura recognized her desire to dive into some form of work. Out of her other creative interests Laura chose to focus on her work with wood, “because it is more versatile, I knew there was more I could do with it. And because I wanted to get really proficient at something while also making use of the materials around my own home.”
One look inside her home will reveal to anyone the gift she possesses in her craft. Cabinets, couches, armoires, and more add dimension and beauty to a home that is itself a work of art. The clean elegant lines and superior crafts(wo)manship of her creations are definite markers of someone who takes great pride and is diligent, not only in the labor of her work, but in the art of it.
When asked about what joy, and of course the challenges, she finds in her work, she says that what simultaneously keeps her up at night and what gives her great satisfaction is “figuring out how to put something together, how to make it all work out and then seeing how things turn out as planned.” After some more thought she adds, “I love coming into the shop every morning, it is my domaine. It gives me a way to feel creative. I identify with what I do, and it is very sustaining … and I won’t say that I don’t like it when people tell me they like what I have made for them.” Who wouldn’t?
They say that necessity is the mother of invention, but in the case of Laura Adams, wood worker and custom cabinet maker extraordinaire, necessity became the mother of industry (as defined by Webster as energetic, devoted activity at any work or task), creativity and innovation.
