This past summer, my mother was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, then died eight weeks later. Among the many things she was in her life, including a mother, a wife, a caretaker, a caterer, a seamstress, an event coordinator, a teacher... she was an artist. Shortly after she passed, I put together some words for her memorial, drawing largely from her own words on art, both her own, and the works from which she learned. This quote of hers stuck with me:

“When I was a very young artist, I discovered the Japanese Edo period at the Freer Gallery. I was drawn to something in works by Tawaraya Sōtatsu. It was the technique known as Tarashikomi—a dripping of pigment into a partially dried area that allows the pigment to disperse into the first layer, creating an ephemeral effect that is both random and confined. I had been doing this since childhood, painting an area with water, and then dripping color into it. I was thrilled to see what I had thought a rebellious ‘playing’ was an honored technique from one of the most disciplined schools (Rinpa) of the Edo period.”

Around the holidays, as nostalgia and memories were kicked up like dust in an old house after the door opens for the first time in a year, I was suddenly flooded with thoughts of my mom. I don’t know if I was looking for a way to connect with her again, or if I needed an intensive task to distract me from how much I hurt (probably both), but I went back to learning how to refinish guitars. This is a skill at which I had already half-heartedly tried my hand, failed a bunch, and had to go back to the drawing board several times. Sometime in October, I decided to get serious about it.

I had a few project-guitars at the time, all of which were in various stages of completion (read: forgotten on the back-burner). I chose one (of the four I already started), stripped the finish down to the wood (again), and took a big page out of Doug’s book from Big D Guitars. Rather than the rattle-can spray paint method, Doug uses a water-based leather dye and a cotton rag to rub the color into the wood, applying the dye exclusively by hand. Most of his work uses one or two colors at a time on a guitar body, but his mastery of the technique is much more apparent in his three-tone sunbursts. Going from the outside in, the color becomes progressively brighter, like a sun bursting through the darkness.

The guitar I chose to try my hand at this was my old Squier Affinity Telecaster I bought for $95 from an ad on Craigslist in 2009, just a week before my 21st birthday. For a few years, it was my only electric guitar. After removing the finish, I laid down my first sunburst: a crimson-oxblood ring around the perimeter reaching three inches into the body, then a ring of walnut-brown one inch in, using the red rag to blend the two, leaving the center bare. I mixed the canary yellow with a brown tint, yielding a golden amber, which I then passed over the whole guitar, completing the burst. As I mixed my own powdered dye into alcohol, tinkered with colors until I was happy, and blended them together on wood, I think I found the playful joy my mom wrote about.

The guitar is a whole new color, but still has most of the nicks, scratches, dings, and dents from its days in my care. The gouge from when a drunk hucked a bottle at the stage downstairs at a Quarry House Tavern gig is still there. I decided to keep as much of the original character as I could, thinking my mother would have enjoyed the variation on kintsugi, highlighting the flaws that make the guitar unique, my first genuine foray into wabi-sabi.

I sealed it with wipe-on poly, polished it enough to shine, but not enough to lose the scratches, bought a new neck, mounted the hardware, and re-wired the electronics. I shared my progress with my friends. Maryjo and Stella were patient with me as I tried, failed, and tried again, only encouraging me to keep at it. The hunk of dyed wood became a guitar once more.

This is what I’ve been working on for the last few months, in between playing gigs, traveling, taking pictures of far-away places, and repairing guitars for others. Now that this lockdown has completely halted all of my gigs, I’m sequestered away with several more test-guitars. I’ll share more as they’re completed, and hope to even pass a few finished pieces to my friends.

This old Squier of mine is special, though. While my mom isn’t here anymore, and while being without her is still painful, I’m happy I found a way to invoke her memory.

Thanks for reading,

--Jon