Pentaculum Uke (IW# 105)

Every year for the last few years, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts hosts an invited residency called Pentaculum.  It is a time for makers and writers to come together to spend an unfettered week exploring, developing, meeting new people, and generally unplugging from their lives in order to just make for a solid week.  This year I was able to go as well, and it was truly a blast.  I met a bunch of great people, and actually got some good work done towards the workshop that I am leading there in June.

Every year one of the people that is a graphic artist attending Pentaculum designs a screen for that week, that only exists that week, and on the Thursday night everyone brings t shirts or shop aprons or something to pull the screen on. I also brought he back of this uke, and we pulled the screen on it.  This year is was James Ehlers, an artist and designer based in Emporia, Kansas.  Pretty sick.  Too big for the back of a tenor uke, but still pretty awesome.

The wood for this one is cherry, and it came from the vanity that was in the bathroom in our house when we moved in.  I saved the wood when I made a new vanity (because I always save everything always) and it ended up making a nice-sounding little tenor uke.

There is an raffle to benefit the following year's Pentaculum on the Friday of the week, and I put this into the raffle.  It was not yet finished, but I promised to finish it and send it to the winner of the raffle.  Because of all of the traveling that I have been doing it took a while, but I am very excited that Desiree Cooper  was the second or third number chosen for the raffle and that she chose this uke.  Go check out the short film that she wrote/produced called "The Choice."  She read it while we were at Pentaculum and it reduced me to tears to the point that I could barely speak.  She is a force of nature.

Tiny chairs glued into the inside of the uke.

I also made these little tiny chairs while I was doing the residency, and some of us started arranging them in different places, in different orientations and generally having fun exploring what it meant to establish little relationships in that way.  I glued them into the uke in the lower bout.  There is a small hole in the side of the uke, and if you look in there just right you can see the chairs.  They don't seem to affect the sound at all.  Fun stuff.


Here is how it sounds: