Steve Altman

I've been working with wood for 40 years. For about 20 of them I was a cabinetmaker in New York City doing what is generally called "high end residential interiors." I worked for some of the richest families in the world.

Now, I just like to make boxes. Maybe it's because my father made boxes, too, except he made them out of paper and cardboard in a display box factory many years ago. Sometimes I played in that factory as a child. I saw lots and lots of boxes, canyons of them. I guess it had some effect on me.
I know that they're just decoration - bits of eye candy perched on a dresser, sitting on a desk, or plunked down haphazardly on a table. Hopefully, though, inviting a closer look, they also provide a glimpse of wood's infinite possibilities: Sight and touch, color and shape, figure and texture, revealed aspects of natural wonder, arrangements bound by simple human effort...
Plus, they hold things.