About
I grew up in the small town of Bluemont, Virginia - a small town which, thanks to my Mom, had me surrounded by talented artists even as a young kid. One of them in particular had an impact on me when I was about 10 years old and I began taking my first art lessons. I owe part of my craft to my teacher even today; she’d often tell me “If you dip your brush in the wrong color accidentally and you paint with it anyway, don’t stop, don’t try to repair it… That’s how art happens.”
Now, the same concept stands within my work. I never forgot what she told me even when I’m turning my trees. If the piece blows up in my face, I don’t slow up, I keep on going. Some of the most unique pieces I’ve created have come from those accidental strokes of catastrophe. Those are the mistakes you never hope for, but when the piece is finished, you wouldn’t have wanted it to happen any other way. It seems like that’s just how art happens.
Fast forward a bit to where my skills started to manifest themselves through a whole different medium. My dad had a woodworking shop on our dairy farm. This shop happened to have a machine that I'd soon become pretty familiar with. A woodturning lathe.
Some years later, in 1978, my brother and I started a woodworking business called Cochran’s Lumber & Millwork. He was just about ready to go off and study music in California. He would be set to leave on a Monday morning, but the Friday just before he left I asked him “Don’t you want to go into business with me and start Cochran’s Lumber and Millwork?” and he hesitantly turned down his college journey and said “I sure do." From there, we’ve now been in business 44 years. Fortunately, the business has gone on… but unfortunately, it has had to go on without him, as he passed away unexpectedly a few years ago. Though it was a blow to all of us and it was challenging to move on from, my son took over his portion of the company and we’re still going strong to this day.
When he and I first started the business, one of my first big wood turning jobs was to turn 350 pickets for some of the restoration work that was going on in old town Georgetown. We had to match the ones that the guy had brought us and when you’re doing 350 of them, you start getting the hang of it a little bit.
After we had been in business for many years, my middle son, when he was still in high school, got a job for an architectural wood turning company. He got pretty interested in using a lathe, so I bought a lathe that his boss had and when my son decided that he was going on to college - the lathe ended up sitting there, collecting dust. So I figured I’d put it to good use. I started turning bowls, odds and ends, little things that I found fun to do…
…which brings us to today. Through the exploration of natural materials that grow from our beautiful earth and the process of learning how to reveal and display their incredible eye-catching character - every rotation of the wood, every scrape of the blade is done, solely and purely, Just for the Art of it.
Larry Cochran / Artist / Owner
