FRIENDS OF BEND - BOYCE STUDIO Behind The Bend
One of the best parts about working in design is getting to meet and work with creative and inspiring makers across all mediums. Though there exists some healthy competition between us, we are also huge supporters of and have a lot of respect for one another. Today, we’re launching a feature on the blog called ‘Friends of Bend’, where we give you all the inside scoop on a maker that we love. For our inaugural post, we have an incredibly talented wood worker, an amazing friend, and all around badass - C.C. Boyce of Boyce Studio.
We met C.C. earlier this year and fell madly in love with her simple yet elegant handmade wood furniture and accessories. A second-generation wood worker, Boyce was born and raised in Wisconsin. Her earliest memory of working with wood is in her basement, a fully functional workshop, making puzzles with a bandsaw at the age of 8. You would think that, given her profession today, a workshop in the basement would have been a dream, but that was not the case. C.C. is the first to admit that all she wanted down there was an over-stuffed sofa and a pool table like the rest of her friends.
After developing her technique in her family workshop as a child, C.C. left Wisconsin and moved to Los Angeles to pursue a slightly different dream, that of becoming a voiceover actor. However, after working in voiceover for over a decade, her roots came calling and she returned to the work she had been doing since childhood. She left her life of sitting in a car for hours and hours at a time, trying to get to auditions and never looked back.
Having no real formal training up to this point, Boyce decided to go back to school a few years ago, enrolling in the El Camino College Woodworking Program here in Southern California. “Learning about woodworking is like learning about wine;” says Boyce, “you can spend your whole life learning and never know all there is to know about it.”
C.C. now spends her days in her new workshop in downtown Los Angeles. Her new workspace is home to a pretty diverse group of makers; everything from woodworking, to clothing manufacturing, and even vintage motorcycle restoration can be found there. This diamond in the rough wasn’t easy to find though. “It took a long time and so much craigslist searching,” Boyce recalls. “Most places were either super gross or out of my price range. Luckily, I have a woodworker friend who also works in the building that currently houses my shop. She told me about a space opening up and I jumped on it. I knew how happy she was in the building, and I had visited there a few times, so I knew that I would be happy there. And I am!” And so are we - happy to be able to call such a talented and creative maker a dear friend.
http://boycestudio.com
