Salvante: He talks about himself as a maker.

And I think, with viewers, that shifts your perspective.

You're like, "Well, what's the difference?

You know, you're a maker, you're an artist.

[ Music plays ] Larimore: I've really settled on the word "maker."

I think it's the best term, Because everything I do revolves around making.

Sculpture is the term that's used to describe the things that I'm exhibiting.

But what I do is make.

[ Music plays ] We live on a farm here, a little farm, 10-acre farm.

It's sort of a funny farm.

We grow a lot of weeds.

It's interesting to end up here.

I grew up on a farm in Michigan.

And then in between, I spent most of my adult life in the city, in Philadelphia.

Salvante: So, we met a number of years ago.

This is over 20 years ago.

When I first met Jack, I knew him as a furniture maker.

After moving to New Jersey, he has been making art pieces since then, which I think has probably been over 15 years or so, surrounded by this rural environment.

You could start to see the influence of his interest in the natural world.

His work really started to respond to that.

His studio is this fantastic, glorious old barn that feeds his creative process.

He collects his materials maybe not knowing what he's gonna do right away, but you just have a sense that he's got a plan, and it will come together.

[ Drill whirring ] [ Music playing ] Larimore: It almost seems ridiculously like it's play or something, like I'm in kindergarten.

That's sort of what it is.

I mean, you hope to be able to regress back to kindergarten so that you can do some good work without your brain getting in the way.

Quite often, it's pretty slow-paced.

[ Music plays ] A new material that I'm using in this exhibition now is cotton -- cotton bolls, which are the way that it's harvested by hand.

In order for me to use those well, I just have to handle them and be with them a little bit and pile them up over here and spread them out over here.

Overarching concept for the exhibition is bonding.

The thing about cotton that makes it such a valuable fiber -- all these individual fibers are just prone to bond to each other.

And yarn's really a strong thing because of all the fibers bonding together.

And it's just, like, one of these "aha" moments when things come together for you.

[ Chain saw buzzing ] Salvante: It's almost a gift.

Nature is giving him a gift.

Here is this log.

Do something with it.

[ Music plays ] He might cut it a certain way... ...to give it a beautiful texture and color.

Then he will pair it with other materials like cloth or fabric, which brings in a softness, blending industrial farm equipment with natural, organic elements.

But when they come together, there's this push and pull, this conversation.

As he works with the materials, his themes and his narratives begin to emerge.

[ Music plays ] Larimore: I think -- yeah, I think the light...

When you look at the work, you're not gonna say, "Oh, this is all about bonding."

That's meant to be provocative.

But if you offer that, if you just offer that out and sort of, like, say, "Look at this through this filter," you know, you can look at through any filter you want to, but I'm offering that as a possibility.

It was a lot of fun to get it set up, and it sort of activates this long wall.

They are pieces of a story.

Each one's a story, and then they're pieces of a bigger story.

So the spheres are covered in fragments of bed sheets.

They're old bed sheets from the thrift stores.

The wood structures -- they're salvaged from a very old antique agricultural thrashing machine.

This is the kind of materials that love the lighting.

The hieroglyph on the wall, which is the shadows, adds another sort of layer.

These things keep expanding my experience.

So they're not done with me, which is cool.

So I brought these in.

These are incredibly interesting things in and of themselves.

I left the last ball without a structural form around it because it gives a sense of continuum.

This is not a done deal.

In the same way, maybe these pieces can reinforce that sort of idea.

These are not assembled into structures.

They're almost like they're raw materials.

This almost looks like the way they were in the studio.

This is the way so much of the work gets done.

You got to try it to see.

I'm having a good time.

It becomes sort of a thing, the conversation between inanimate objects, you know, but I believe in it.

I'm as excited to see this all installed and be in the gallery with it as anybody 'cause of what I'll learn.

It's sort of a rich and provocative experience of this piece just to see into this little window and see the chain in there, and it invites you to come around and check it out a little bit more.

And then, within the same view is this other new piece titled "Hand."

I think these two are having this great conversation.

Salvante: With the exhibition "Bonding," it's not just a collection of works.

It's a journey of the soul of a maker, and his profound experience and relationship with his materials that fuel it.

Nature is his muse.

And as a maker, being in that environment influences him.

He takes inspiration from his surrounding area.

Larimore: Self-expression is sort of an interesting thing to be able to pursue.

It's a really rich way to keep growing and find out about yourself and about the world.

Being here and working here, I get to have all these experiences with nature.

I get to feel really connected to the land.

It's really kindled that part of me that I had as a kid.

So it's like a little bit of a complete circle.

It's lovely, actually.