Artist David Guido knew he was onto something when one of the lamps he made was described as a “warm hug.”
“That one still impacts me today,” Guido tells Williamson Scene. “I still have that front of mind whenever I'm creating something.”
Guido, the artist behind Well Lit Woods, will showcase his wooden lamps at the Tom Beckbe store at 420 Main St. on Friday, part of the First Friday Art Crawl produced by the Arts Council of Williamson County.
It all started with a Pinterest photo he saw 10 years ago: a scored piece of wood with a curve to it. An engineer by trade, Guido was able to emulate the piece once, but didn’t pick the craft back up for eight years. Well Lit Woods started in earnest a-year-and-a-half ago, when his passion project of making art outside of his manufacturing job became his full-time business.
Guido’s lamps do not use any adhesives or nails, but instead precise pinch points utilizing the wood’s natural flexibility. Intricate locking mechanisms are cut into the durable vellum paper, too, which diffuses the light to a warm glow.
It takes 20 to 30 minutes to prepare the wood and an hour to cut the wood and vellum. Then, there are three hours of sanding, staining and sealing, followed by an hour for assembly and packaging.
But that’s far from the total time it takes for Guido to achieve his intricate designs. He does not use 3D modeling and instead has meticulously measured and cut each piece to a tenth of a millimeter. For his first lamp, it took 60 different prototypes. The microscale work is all part of the fun for Guido.
“I really love puzzles, and I love 3D puzzles especially, and the fun of the design is in figuring out how to play with the materials, how to assemble it,” he says. “I have an idea, I'm going to draw it out, and then I'm going to take my energy and time and focus on how to make this a reality so that I can see that in real life, see it in front of me.”
Guido was always interested in activities like 3D printing and laser cutting, which he credits to being “nerdy.” After graduating with a degree in industrial design, Guido started working in manufacturing, operating a computer-controlled milling machine, work he says had “absolutely no soul.” Well Lit Woods became the way for Guido to combine his skills, interest in functional art and love of the outdoors.
To achieve his goal of bringing the outdoors in, he keeps materials as raw as possible, using FSC-certified Birch, meaning it was sustainably sourced.
“I love the idea of integrating things with nature and not having to reinvent the wheel,” he says.
His mother is a photographer, which at least in part led him to notice lighting more acutely. You don’t want hospital lights in a meditation room or meditation lights in the hospital room, Guido quips.
“Lighting has always had a very big impact in my life,” he says. “I've always been very conscious of the fact that lighting makes and breaks a room. It's the one factor in design that immediately affects everything around it, and it's the most straightforward way to change a space — for the better or for the worse.”
He appreciates functional art work, defined as something that both has a purpose and brings joy. In fact, his popular product is the light box, designed to fit a light bulb perfectly so he could ship the lamps without styrofoam or plastic. People will order dozens for birthdays, wedding favors or holiday gifts, he says.
For the sunny Arizona native, one of the functions of the lamps includes adjusting to Nashville’s cloudy days.
“I wanted to design something using those modern techniques that brought nature into the home and brought a sense of warmth and peace," he says. Essentially just something to get away from the daily rat race and all of the electronics and overstimulation."