Rich Gady, 66, estimates he built and detailed 60 percent of the wooden furniture in the Lakewood home he shares with his wife, Deb, 62, and their 8-month-old border collie mix, Lexie.
Every one of the precisely crafted cabinets, display hutches, side tables and whittled knickknacks exemplify the Red Rocks Community College instructor’s skill level with a little-known woodworking craft called marquetry.
“Right away, it (marquetry) grabbed me. I knew I wanted to learn that technique,” Gady said. “That was in 1984. … I started right in making pictures out of trial and error with different knives and things.”
Gady’s skills are in those pared details. Throughout the house, yucca plants, three-dimensional desert scenes and surreal images of outer space pulsate colorfully against the neutral browns of maple and walnut. The details are created by carefully slicing shapes from exotic, wooden veneer sheets and sanding them flat into the furniture.
Gady started teaching classes on woodwork, veneering and marquetry at Red Rocks Community College’s Lakewood campus in 1994. In 2010, Gady helped a local chapter of the American Marquetry Society take root in Colorado.
Since then, he and other members of the 15-person WyColo chapter have planned a furniture-and-art showcase to formally introduce the Western Slope to the delicate, ancient art of wood design inlay.
After a year of planning, the National Marquetry Show will open Sept. 9 at the Lakewood Arts Council Co-Op Gallery at 85 S. Union Blvd.
“The exhibition offers the metro area something it has never seen before — a strictly marquetry-oriented show,” said Scott Roth, a member of the WyColo marquetry chapter. “The exhibition, along with the workshops and symposium, is a unique combination not seen anywhere in the U.S. on this large of a scale.”
The month-long showcase will include two workshops from Gady on Sept. 12 and 13. One will be a demonstration of the marquetry donkey, a tool Gady built to help cut through stacked layers of veneer for multiple images of a pattern, for example to create a flock of doves. The other workshop will be on the concept of Trompe L’oeil, or optical illusions.
“My influences are people like M.C. Escher and Salvador Dali,” Gady said.
Many of his art pieces play with shadows and dimensions, creating deceptive layers and dreamlike patterns. Three of his pieces will be on sale at the showcase through Oct. 4.
Another attraction is guest of honor Silas Kopf, a carpenter and marquetry expert whom Gady worked with in 1992.
More than 20 years ago, the two spent about 200 total hours creating an untitled marquetry piece depicting a young man who is looking at himself in a mirror, seeing his reflection as a soldier. The 5½-foot-wide by 3 ½-foot-tall project was given to the National Guard in North Carolina.
Gady said it was the most time-consuming, painstaking marquetry project he ever did, and also the last time he saw Kopf.
“It should be a nice reunion,” he said.
