Terry Conrad

In early 2020 with the combination of the Pandemic and the birth of my child, like most of the world I had to respond to a shift. I found myself at home away from the printshop. My life focus changed. I found myself reaching back to earlier interests in life, music and musical instruments. I took this time away from the printshop to play my guitar after nearly 15 years of not playing it regularly. I started building simple chordophones, mainly cigar box guitars and other noise makers. This was a way to musically communicate with my baby daughter. The instruments became more complicated and I started researching traditional luthiery. I started learning from Tracy Cox at Inlay Design Studio in the Adirondacks Mountains of NY.  

In August of 2020 there was a derecho (intense damaging windstorms) in the Midwest. Iowa was hit hard by this intense straight-line windstorm and thunderstorm. Sadly, it was said that 7.2 million trees were lost in Iowa during that storm. Over the days and weeks I collected logs from many Iowa City trees. I embarked in learning about milling lumber on a small scale.  I appreciated the slowness of preparing lumber as in general every inch of wood requires one year of dry time.

As these experiments grew I started bringing printmaking processes and the scientific research into the cons­truction of these instruments. The Globorataloides hexagonus ukulele was made from wood (locust, cedar, walnut, pear) collected after the 2020 Derecho in Iowa. The interior of this instrument has a silkscreened printed image referencing the surface of a foraminifera, particularly the species Globorataloides hexagonus. The image printed on wood depicts the surface texture of the organism. The inlay on the top of the ukulele is of the overall shape of Globorataloides hexagonus.  I liked the play of heirloom quality furniture that utilizes Zoomorphic design. I wanted to start to make objects that focus on small organisms that were not historically decoratively included in functional objects. In a time when so much of the natural world is being communicated by small things, microorganism identifying global change and viruses. These organisms are talking to us.