Leaves of Twin Oaks #123

Windsor Chair Made By Purl

Purl (Sean Samoheyl) has lived at Twin Oaks for 15 years. One job he does here is build chairs by hand for use in our kitchens and living rooms, and for sale to the general public. The money he earns from this work is part of how the community supports itself, and this is a good example of how people can integrate their personal interests and skills into the fabric of community life.

How did you start hand-crafting chairs for Twin Oaks?

I was already making chairs for the community in 2008, when there was a power outage, and I got inspired to continue working by hand, with no power tools. I have a small workshop here that is tiny and quaint and full of hand-tools and projects-in-process. I have a strong value of producing for ourselves what we use in our daily living. I value making things using a smaller carbon footprint, by using hand-tools (some power tools too) and using locally- and sustainably-harvested wood, including oak, walnut, poplar and hickory. I often use milk paint for color and tung oil and paste wax for the finish.

What kind of chairs do you make?

I make a lot of Windsor-style chairs, some ladder-backs, and sometimes related furniture like rocking chairs, stools, and occasionally a table. I’ve learned a lot from my teachers, including  Peter Galbert, Elia Bizzarri, Curtis Buchanon, and Harvey Baker at Dunmire Hollow community for building tables.

One fun chair I made is for my daughter, who is now 8. I made it when she was 5, and I intentionally constructed it with extra long-legs. Every year, as she grows a little taller, we cut an inch or two off the bottom of the legs, so it’s again the right height for her to use sitting about our kitchen table.

Where are the chairs featured and how do people find them to purchase them?

I demonstrate hand-crafted chair-making at various events. I was a FolkLife Fellow Master Chair Maker with The Virginia FolkLife Festival, I’ve done displays at the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello, at our regional Field Days of the Past, and I’ve sold at the Charlottesville Farmer’s Market. I participated in Francis Cape’s woodworking art project in which benches from historical and contemporary intentional communities were re-constructed and featured in his book “We Sit Together: Utopian Benches” and at a gallery in NYC.  I also often connect with people, either other artists or people who are interested in my work, on social media and by word-of-mouth. You can find Purl on Facebook here.

What are your ideas for the future?

I want to continue making chairs for people to use in their everyday lives. I’ve worked teaching members here some of these skills, and I have aspirations of teaching farther afield.

Feminist Think Tank: Past and Future

The Feminist Think Tank (FTT) group at Twin Oaks began in fall of 2015 in response to
concerns about inter-community boundary-crossing issues. It’s gone through some changes since then and has recently re-formed. Originally, our process team was tasked with looking at the sexual assault and harassment response policy and organized a focus group meeting of women to help guide the process. This group continued to meet and ended up discussing all sorts of feminist issues at twin oaks, gradually inviting some gender-non-conforming folks and men to attend every other meeting. Over time, the group became more focused on events and activism in the community.

In our first year, we accomplished many things:

• movie showing
• play reading
• two consent workshops
• feminist dance party
• feminist creek walk
• reviving monthly women’s tea for female visitors
• two men’s meetings
• women’s (and mixed) tool-using workshops
• introducing the values oreo to the visitor program
• supporting racial justice at the Women’s Gathering
• supporting the “visiting our visions” program
• supporting the zine discussion group
• publishing an article in geez magazine about living and working together incommunity despite having differing individual philosophies of feminism
• sparking conversations with other communards
• ftt e-mail list to share additional resources, articles, etc
• bringing together folks from different social circles
• helping to increase focus on the bylaws on a community-wide scale

As with many regular meetings at Twin Oaks, the original group dwindled in attendance
over time due to a variety of reasons (people leaving the community, scheduling conflicts, general attrition, interpersonal conflicts, political differences, etc) and so we decided to revamp the group this past fall 2016. The new incarnation of FTT now meets every two weeks and is open to anyone of any gender who:

1. Acknowledges the patriarchy exists
2. Identifies as a feminist or feminist ally, and
3. Recognizes that patriarchy is at play at Twin Oaks and wants to do something about it

Since re-forming the group, we’ve organized another two consent workshops prior to the 2017 New Year’s Eve party, designed and distributed fingerbooks about consent
expectations for the New Year’s Eve party, had several folks participate in the Women’
March on Washington, and have continued to discuss our sexual assault and
harassment response policy.

Ideas we have for the future include a consent tea party, consent fingerbook for Validation Day, increasing men’s support around the Women’s Gathering, more feminism 101 programming and educational opportunities, better bridging of issues between Twin Oaks and the outside world, doing more outside activism in order to gain connections and resources, re-inserting Twin Oaks into radical circles, dealing with the perception gap between how men and women see feminism at twin oaks, a feminist discussion group, and more. While Twin Oaks is certainly less sexist than mainstream society, we’re definitely “not utopia yet” and need to continuously strive to improve our culture at twin oaks and the world at large.