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BUTTE, Mont. (AP) — After Dan Cornell mastered the straight line, he wanted to look at how curves are made.
It is Cornell's fascination with a curving line that has kept him making boats as a hobby since his retirement as the art teacher at Butte High School in 2013. He builds cedar strip canoes for family members or friends.
Cornell's workshop is a simple garage in the home he built in a neighborhood off West Park Street in Butte, reported the Montana Standard (http://bit.ly/28MIYQn). He keeps two canoes he made for two of his daughters. He has a cedar strip kayak in his workshop that is under construction for his son. He has also traded his boats for works of art. Cornell estimates that if he sold his handmade creations, they would cost thousands of dollars because of the costs of materials and labor.
Cornell, 69, started his 19-year career at Butte High School as the carpentry teacher. He got his students to build boats because it was a way of explaining the concept of two-dimensional drafts vs. three-dimensional objects to teenagers.
He also realized it was a way to build his students' confidence.
"They thought it was beyond their ability, but I knew it was well within their ability," Cornell said.
The students built their first boat, a cedar strip canoe, in the 1990s. After that, there were no more confidence issues for his students.
One of Cornell's former students, Luke Davis, said he remembers building a boat in Cornell's carpentry workshop.
"It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever done," Davis said.
Cornell believes building a boat is not just creating something beautiful, it's a way of defying consumerist culture.
"I think it's important for people to make things," Cornell said. "'The man' wants us to be a plain old consumer. Or we can build widgets (ordinary things built on straight lines). But that's not something that appeals to the heart and soul. A boat is a work of art."
Born in Brooklyn, Cornell found his way to Montana by attending Montana State University-Bozeman, where he started studying architecture but wound up getting his degree, instead, in education. Despite his urban upbringing, Cornell's father was a miner. Cornell's father worked in an iron ore mine in New Jersey when Cornell was growing up.
Cornell relocated to Butte after serving in the Army during the Vietnam War. He worked in construction before joining Butte High School as the carpentry teacher.
Cornell shifted to teaching art at Butte High after a female student received a small cut on her hand in his carpentry workshop. He feared another, larger injury might happen someday, so he decided to teach art instead. But he took up boat building again after he retired.
One reason Cornell is drawn to boat building is because a boat contains a complex curve — meaning it bends both up and down and in and out simultaneously.
"Most people don't take the time to look at a straight line, but they'll look at a curve. Why not take the time to make a curve?" he said.
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Information from: The Montana Standard, http://www.mtstandard.com
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