Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/410828
228 works, eschewing sprayed polyurethane varnish or lacquer because he thinks it looks "plastic-y." Working by hand extends to other parts of Cameron's crea- tive process, too, like using wooden hand planes that he made himself and drawing rough pencil sketches on paper before executing a piece. "People respond to hand drawings," he says. "You can go anywhere and get a lovely CAD drawing, but there're no smudges on it." There's no sign of the hand and mind that created it. For the past nine years, Cameron has worked in Gloucester, where he also lives, designing and creating a variety of commissioned and spec pieces. They range from works like the Ming Dynasty- inspired Crane Chairs with fluidly curving black splats that comfortably flex as they're leaned into; to a headboard with a "crazy burl veneer of walnut" embellish- ing its center; to an Art Deco-influ nced custom cabinet made from wood that he describes as "a symphony in reds" adorned with an escutcheon plate that's hand engraved with a kelp vignette. Despite his decades of work in furniture building, Cameron's creative life didn't begin in a workshop. It began at the piano. He attended Berklee College of Music at a time when "nobody wanted to admit they went to music school," he says. He found a passion for songwriting, and got gigs in local bands. Having always loved building, too, though, he also found work in that trade, first as a boat builders' apprentice in Salem and then as a bench work apprentice at a furniture shop in Cambridge. Then, "the band I was in finally started to take off," he says. That band was Bim Skala Bim, the well-respected (and still ac- tive) Boston Ska-rock band, with which he spent years playing and touring the United States and the world, all the while harbor- ing that love of designing and building. "I was still woodworking like crazy in my basement," he says, until he saw a new American furniture exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts that blew him away, opening his eyes to what ambitious,