(upbeat music) - There's more than what you see.

There's always gonna be something that you never knew was there that's gonna be there.

(upbeat music) I've been a custom home builder for over 25 years now, and I sort of just dabbled in the creative process of jewelry boxes and things on my off time at home.

I built houses for country music star Kenny Rogers and Dwayne the Rock Johnson, and some of the amenities that went into their houses were just weird, as far as pocketing walls and hidden door systems and rooms.

Those untraditional building styles allowed me to think outside the box and fueled my artistic style and ability.

I make bandsaw boxes and grain cutting boards, sculptures.

I enjoy putting secret compartments or hidden magnetic locks or levers for operation.

I don't use templates or patterns when I make stuff.

It's all original, so everything is unique and different, which is what carries my attention onto the next piece.

If it was by repetition, I would quickly lose interest.

I'd laminate a block of wood together with different tones, so you'll have a variety of hardwoods, from maple, walnut to cherry.

Once I have that block, that's my canvas right there, and from there, I will draw on the block what I'm going to cut out, figure out secret compartments or how I want it to operate.

There's indiscrepancies in a lot of woods, so to accentuate those things I think separates you from a normal artist, so like a knot turning into an eyeball or a crack, turning into a figurative piece of that piece of woodwork that you're doing, where some people might say this is trash and throw it away, it's messed up, I try to enjoy the mistakes in the woodwork and really just drawing focus to those points and making them key figures of that piece.

This is the cracked not clock.

Everything that you see here besides the motor in the housing in the back was salvaged wood.

This is flamed box elder, it's actually a type of maple.

This is walnut, which was also felled from a piece of property and kiln dried and used as trim pieces.

The body was actually hollow.

It's made from a skeleton frame and then wrapped with plywood.

It is unique in the form that it's very interactive, so back here, these are actually magnetic rosettes that just come off and expose a hidden pull for a secret drawer.

Once the drawer is out, you have a pop down compartment right here.

Inside the pop down compartment is a magnetic key card that actually, if you go to the front of the clock, I'll open up the front of the clock for you.

(machine beeping) I think it's the whimsical, you know, looks like it came out of Alice in Wonderland and maybe a reincarnation of Dolly with the functionality, once you take in the clock and what it means to you, then you see the actual functionality of the compartments and the time and attention that went into that stuff.

It really goes over the top with feelings and emotions from the individual.

Everybody always asks me, do I put the crack in there?

Does it come like that?

Yes, I cut it out like that.

I do like the cracked things.

It speaks to me like as individuals, we can all be broken in a sense, but still be functional.

Sometimes I start a piece and then I walk away from it for months at a time, and then I'll come back and then I'll finally be able to see it come to fruition and then I'll continue with it.

(upbeat music) When I'm in that process, I'm in a totally different world.

I wake up in the morning and I'm out there working in a wood shop all day long.

I get hyper-focused on stuff.

That's all I think about work on until it's finished.

It's my happy place.

I've got nothing but positive feedback.

People genuinely come up to me, some people in tears and telling me what I've made and how it transpires to their life, and people pushing me to keep moving forward with what I'm doing because they see something that maybe I haven't seen yet, but it definitely inspires me to keep making and creating nothing's perfect in the world.

There's this standard when it comes to woodworking of perfection and I think that if individuals, you know, can kind of take themselves out of the confines of perfection and take a minute to let what they're looking at, just resonate with them, they'll see things differently.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, and by the members of Prairie Public.