So: You’re a tree in New Haven. You weather storms, bugs, and disease. After a long life, your time has come to an end.
As you lay rotting by the side of the road, a miracle finds you. Not only are you destined for an afterlife of getting buffed and polished. But you start the whole journey with something you’ve probably never had: a bath.
The bath comes courtesy of Fred White, a retired tool-and-die maker and Button King (so named for an invention of his), who has turned his craftsman’s eye to the art of deadwood sculptures for the last decade.
White finds wood, carves away the rotted parts, adds elements “from the Goodwill,” and makes them into lamps, tables, fruit baskets, and standalone sculptures before shipping them off as far away as Nebraska and California.
It all begins with a wash, either in White’s own tub or by power washer.
“When you wash them by hand, you know every nook and cranny,” White said. He rids the wood of any debris and starts to discover what shapes the piece might hold.
“Staring is a very big part. Sometimes it’ll tell, sometimes it’ll show you.”
When I visited White’s home gallery on Norton Street in Beaver Hills Tuesday afternoon, the first thing I saw was a tall piece of raw gnarled wood leaning against his house.
White told me the piece of wood used to be even bigger — 12 feet! — but it fell and split into multiple parts. He had just sold a portion to driftwood sculptor friend Alan Horwitz, who was sticking around to help tell me about White’s art, argue with him a bit (“The only thing we can agree on is that we’re friends,” White told me), and take him out for soul food for his 68th birthday.
“Done is like when I’m happy happy with it,” White told me as we breezed through the second-story deck where he displays much of his art. From 8 p.m. to midnight on any given night, it becomes the Gallery Deck Late Night, where White and his friends hang out on the turf floor and swing chairs, listen to vibey music, and chill out in the glow of White’s multicolored lights. White doesn’t drink beer himself, but he keeps a few cold ones in the fridge for his friends.
The gallery extends indoors to White’s living room, where he showed me what became of the other parts of the original 12-footer that gave birth to the piece outside.
One portion was now a tall lamp in the corner, the wood nice and shiny with a high-gloss finish. “It isn’t ready yet,” White told me, fiddling with the details of the lamp.
He took off small glass light coverings, put them back on, and flipped an hourglass-like accessory so the particles inside rained down. “It’s not cohesive, it’s not like three of something.”
Another chunk became a wall hanging with a secret.
“It’s also a fruit basket,” White said, taking the artwork off the wall, flipping it upside down, and setting it on the table.
Before I knew what was happening, he had placed a couple apples in the bowl and was tossing peanuts in as well.
“Two pockets,” he said, pointing. “One for nuts, one for fruit.” These were naturally occurring divots, each with a size that did indeed seem to correspond perfectly to its current purpose.
“I’m not a carver,” White told me. Still, “if you see something, you bring it out.”
In between musings on wood and art, White showed me some of his inventions: the TV ring, a curtain ring that hides electrical TV wiring with the help of a small rod and curtain, and the Ready Button, a no-sew fix using a patented piece of plastic to install a button on the go. It was this product that gave him the name Button King.
White told me that in his work as a tool-and-die maker, which he began a few years out of high school, he used to help make parts for tanks and helicopters. What really got him going, though, was talking about the casters on grocery carts. He recalled how he would “pop them out, pow, pow, pow!” Starting with a steel slab, White would create the machinery for products like forks and hoods of cars. He described the thrill of what it was like to “knock out like a billion spoons, or lids for pots.”
White’s supervisors would often leave him alone. “What you do, they don’t know how to do,” he said. Their orders were more like requests, and they would come to White asking to be moved to the front of the line.
White’s talent kept the supervisors off his back as a worker. It now gives him creative freedom in his retirement. He doesn’t do custom pieces, only the exact shapes he and his deadwood are willing to create together.
The table underneath White’s fruit and nut bowl, with a glass top and a base of shelled-out wood, was itself a piece White was working on.
“It’s got form, but it’s got muscles too,” White said. The wood featured bumps and curves, which White could have buffed out but decided not to.
“He listens to the wood,” Horwitz explained.
White told me sometimes the wood resists being smoothed over or changed. He has to respect that. The way he said it, it felt like ignoring these warnings would be a grave mistake.
The night before, White had stayed up until 1 a.m. working on a smaller horizontal piece that now sat next to the lamp. Colored lights reflected off the interior of the cave-like structure, and two tiny elephants took a walk along the rim.
“The pieces draw you in,” he said. “I could see myself contemplating, sitting there.”
White’s style of craftsmanship centers around the natural events that happen to the wood. First, the tree has to die. Then the wood decays. If it falls and splits open, even better. He seems fascinated in each piece’s journey, as much a creator as an audience member himself. He doesn’t strain himself or go against the wishes of the wood in trying to make his mark.
“If you don’t use it, burn it,” White said about the pieces he found. “Have a cookout.”
Fred White sells and displays his artwork at his home gallery. You can contact him at (203) 275‑7781 or newbuttonking@yahoo.com to arrange a visit.
