Owen Borges

Owen is a woodworker and artist from Seattle who came to PTSW from New York. He began woodworking while earning a degree in sculpture at Harvard University, where he was mentored by Oliver Strand, a poet and Windsor chairmaker. Since graduating, he has worked in a variety of woodworking settings, from crafting high-end frames under Japanese masters to fabricating luxury campervans to carving sculptures for a well-known artist. 

Owen is interested in traditions of figurative woodcarving and sees woodworking as a process of personal and material discovery. He is fascinated by humanity’s relationship to wood and the act of intervening in organic structures. His current woodworking practice is mostly focused on figurative handcarving, in which he is always finding room for improvement. When not teaching or working in the shop, he enjoys working with textiles, cooking, and hiking.