VUE

In an age when convenience outshines craftsmanship and artistry slips further from our daily lives, one man in High Point, North Carolina steers against the tide of change. For the past six years, Jeremy Kamiya has been making art that is minimalist, functional, and made entirely of wood. It's furniture that Kamiya has been making since 2015 and he's making it as art. I t began in December of 2014 when Kamiya and his wife started a new venture together selling furniture. The pieces were imported by the couple from Bali, Indonesia where her family resides. They filled as many unique pieces as would fit inside a 40-foot storage container and sent it back to North Carolina where, in the town of Durham, the couple rented a showroom space from Kamiya's father. There was a lot of interest from potential customers, but the furniture wasn't moving. "It was not tremendously successful," says Kamiya, "otherwise I'd probably still be in the importing business." On the retail floor of his showroom, his customers liked the furniture but there was an element that was missing. "People would love the stuff and ask me if I made it," Kamiya remembers, "and after a while I got tired of saying no, that I don't make it." In his showroom surrounded by the unsold furniture, Kamiya's disappointment was soon replaced with curiosity. "I wondered if I could take this table apart and make something different," he says, "So I bought a few small tools and that's when I learned." With some private study online, Kamiya acquired the basics of safety and in late December of 2015 he says he, "went for it." By Christmas he had finished piece number one, an attractive live-edge side table he presented as a gift to his wife. V U E N J .C O M 75

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