by Bella Erakko
Sometimes a tree falls; sometimes we fall. Chris Shotton has learned to make use of both. A Hannibal native, he frequented the Bowling Green family farm, and found himself deeply drawn to the fallen black walnut trees on the family property. “It’s just my favorite. There was 40 years of drying. All the enzymes dry out and the wood gets a real pretty color.” Today he works with saw mills using kilns to dry this wood.
The offspring of a grandfather who crafted chests, tables, boxes, and benches, and a father who carves owls, fish, and birds, Shotton marks every table leg with three bars for three generations. Another trademark is the hand-drawn trees that he will later cut out of wood, file it, sand it, and integrate it into a table or chair. But the bond between fallen tree and fallen man came in 2014 when he slipped and fell, stood, fell again, drove, passed out, and learned he had a traumatic brain injury resulting in a migraine headache, every single day, and a propensity to fall. Black walnut became his physical therapy. “I have to push through every single day. Grit my teeth. Get off the sofa. It hurts a little more.” It took practice, but he developed a very high tolerance for pain. “You focus so hard on something, you don’t feel your head hurting.
An opening reception will be held on Saturday December 14 from 5 until 8:00 pm And he’s become an expert in falling. “If I’m walking to the mailbox and LOOK at the mailbox, I don’t fall. But if I listen to a bird sing, or get distracted in any way, I fall.”
Yet there is nothing but beauty in the chess tables, straight back chairs, rocking chairs, cutting boards and platters. He laughs, acknowledging the unlikely match of a man with a traumatic brain injury working with power tools. But in some strange way, the marriage of fallen tree and falling man has created black walnut furniture that will never fall.
