This post is written by TimberHomes partner/owner, Dawn Robin. Our company is lucky that Dawn hangs her professional hat here, and we are so inspired by the work she writes about here.
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I recently returned from a three week trip down to Middle Tennessee, to teach a timber framing workshop with TimberGnome emeritus Ariel Schecter. This was the third time that Ariel and I taught a workshop at Chinkapin Craftstead in Woodbury, Tennessee. Smack dab in the middle of the state, this arts center is home to so much vibrant culture in a relatively rural area, and provides an outlet for creative expression with a focus on lifting queer and trans voices. Our connection with this place began in 2023 when Ariel and I taught 18 students how to timber frame, a beautiful king post truss pavilion/gallery/stage that the craftstead uses for plays, film screenings, art shows, dances, and everything in between. When we returned in 2024, we built two artist residence cabins on the land, one shed and one gable, both gorgeous timber frames with plenty of heritage joinery and live edge details. Since then, Chinkapin has hosted an average of 25 visiting artists each year!
This year, we led a workshop centered around a more accessible cabin for artists with specific accessibility needs. This cabin features a larger footprint, wider door, a single floor (rather than a sleeping loft) and a ramp up to the covered porch and entrance. It’s also much closer to parking and the only building on the property with running water. Our class was a very manageable 15 students, all of whom were such a treat to work with. It was mostly adults and one very brilliant 14 year old. The meals were incredible home-cooked food the entire time, with local fermentation celebrity Sandor Katz making a guest appearance to cook a dinner for us.
The week was such a portal, it really felt like we were all at summer camp, and I find it amazing how a group like this can go from being total strangers to being incredibly tight-knit in just a week of working towards a common goal together. It makes you wonder how much more interconnected our communities would feel if we were helping each other build all the time! With a wide range of pre-existing skillsets among the student body, it was an exciting challenge to meet the beginners where they were at while also keeping the most advanced students engaged. This balancing act has got to be one of the most exhilarating parts of teaching.
As you can see from the pictures, it was a lot of smiles, even on the days when the students were learning a lot all at once. Particularly, I really enjoyed some of the facilitatory aspects of teaching this workshop. Like, how do you guide a group of people through a task they’ve never done before while making sure that every voice is heard, that everyone’s light gets to shine, and that everyone stays happy, healthy, and safe in the meantime. With a fairly diverse group representing a wide range of skill and learning style, it’s a tall order. But I think Ariel and I have it pretty dialed in after doing this together for a few years. It’s a special thing to teach this traditional craft to a group of queers, it feels like important work to share this beautiful trade with folks who might otherwise feel pushed to the margins in the construction world. I have consistently come away from these workshops at Chinkapin with the sense that I’ve done something very meaningful and important by showing up and leading enthusiastically and sensitively. And hey, in the end we usually end up building a really cool thing, too! In some ways, the cabin timber frame is simply a byproduct of a group of people figuring a thing out together and having space to be their whole selves amidst it all. I don’t know where else I’ve found an environment like this, where a group this diverse can come together in a trades setting and build something incredible with nothing but our hands and a truck full of century-old tools, all while each being exactly who we are. It’s rare, special, and really important.
It’s hard to summarize why this workshop felt particularly special. I’ve taught other places too, and sure it’s always really exciting. But to be in a beautiful landscape with exclusively fellow queer and trans people, approaching the trade of timber framing outside of the mainstream male-dominated culture of the construction world, giving this centuries-old skill to people with new and innovative ideas about how they’ll use it to build shelter and community… yeah, it’s special beyond words… To put it really simply, I think this is a literally magical thing that happens in a little corner of rural Tennessee, and I feel immensely grateful and humbled to get to be involved in it.
