Craftsman pursues new art, business

Editor’s Note: This is one in a continuing series of columns tracking businesses, from start-ups to larger-scale management strategies, in our area.

As a guy who saws, chisels and hammers my weekends away, I’ll admit I quietly covet Paul Bowden’s hands. It’s a pair of mitts probably no stronger or tougher than average, but through the 25 years since Bowden graduated from Eastport’s Marine Trade Center, they have crafted hardwood into ever more refined cabinetry and woodwork.

The Lamoine resident spent years lofting hulls, building molds and repairing woodwork for Hank Hinckley’s Ocean Cruising Yachts in Town Hill, for Jock Williams and for Henry Abel’s Yacht Yard in Mount Desert. He has also worked on and off for himself, building furniture, cabinetry in homes and doing contract boat work. But with two youngsters to look after, life felt more secure and just plain easier with a regular job. So, for the past decade, Bowden practiced his craft with Joe Tracy, who runs a studio furniture design shop on Mount Desert.

Then a funny thing happened. Tracy’s outfit hit a slow spell last fall, just as Bowden’s family life shifted gears. The breather from work lasted a week, two weeks – just long enough for the woodworker to wonder: What might happen if I turned these hands loose to do as they pleased?

“I’ll be 48 this year. My kids are out of the house, into college. I feel like this is the time for me to start focusing my work around things that are inspiring to me,” he explains. “I have all this technical ability, but I haven’t really pushed myself in terms of creating new things.”

So Bowden started to push. He began turning out more expressive pieces on his lathe -toying with more unique, sculpture-like ideas. To pay the bills, he reconnected with old customers and quickly found he had lined up a year’s worth of private work. Most of the jobs didn’t necessarily break any new creative ground, but they launched him into business for himself. And they handed him control over his career.

He was soon looking at his work life the way he eyed a rough block of cherry sitting on his workbench: as something to be shaped according to his abilities. He began investigating what it might mean to develop this new set of entrepreneurial skills, taking classes, gathering advice on how to develop this new craft.

“I’m discovering a lot of resources out there that are helping me just to think more like I really am in business,” Bowden said. “But it’s a struggle. My tendency is just to want to go out and do the work and not think about all that stuff.”

It’s an age-old ritual – a craftsman maturing into a more artistic, expressive phase of life. It is also an immense personal challenge, stepping away from being an employee, into a world of more choices, more decisions, more risk. Those lessons and challenges will be part of this column in the coming months, as Mr. Bowden and others decide what does and doesn’t work for their young businesses.