WORK 5. Deck the Halls Benefit Show

On the night of Friday, December 11 2009, the inside of downtown Honolulu hotspot Manifest was all abuzz with the pitter patter of not-so-little feet: it was the opening of the Lightsleepers' Deck the Halls show, a benefit art show for skater Kenny Brimer, recently diagnosed with Leukemia. Two weeks prior I thought it would be cool to hand carve some custom lettering work; two days before the show and three days into a five-day wood-gouging session I began to have my doubts. The Sears Craftsman wood chisel I bought first chipped its edge, and once it went dull would never be quite as sharp as they were when I bought them, even after multiple sharpenings. What originally was to be an exercise in precision wood chiseling, quickly turned into a multiple day ordeal of semi-controlled gouging — to the point where it left a very visible bruise on my palm, and I lost feeling in my thumb and forefinger (and only very recently regained the feeling almost 2 months later). Ah, how we suffer for our craft.