The expression of movement coupled with the beautiful natural elements of wood.

For Helena, Montana based woodworker Tim Carney.

The design and creation of beautiful wood furniture is both organically pleasing to the eye and is also very practical and usable.

>>I've done a lot of cabinetry all along.

I mean that it's kind of the what's allowed me to do the furniture.

I really try to put my artistic sense into that too.

I remember early on one of the first live edge dining tables I made.

I found these beautiful pieces of quilted maple.

They were live edge.

I just thought, boy, these are just gorgeous and live edge pieces where you're using the whole piece.

There's sometimes big knots or splits or things like that that you have to deal with in a tabletop.

You can put butterfly keys in there to accent them, flaw in the wood and make it a really nice accent in the tabletop.

>>With roughly 50 years of woodworking under his belt.

Working with the medium is a constant in his life.

>>I was always very interested in it from childhood.

I grew up in Boise, Idaho, and, I remember very distinctly having we had a basement under the basement stairs.

I had a little shop.

I built model airplanes and I built all sorts of things.

My family used to, laugh about the things I came up with from down in the basement.

>>After working as a carpenter in 1973 for the Northern Pacific Railroad in Pocatello, Idaho, and later opening businesses and woodworking there, Tim moved his shop to Helena around 1996 to be with his soon to be wife, Maureen.

>>Helena is very open to the arts and it was a little tough setting up the business to start with.

>>Having a community that embraces artists.

It was a natural fit for the couple to eventually open a pop up gallery.

The opening of the One Plus One gallery in downtown Helena gave Tim and Maureen a chance to place their works beside other local artists, and a venue meant to show and market their wares.

>>I don't know that if I that I set out to make it art, that I just I couldn't help myself.

I just did.

One big influence on that was Sam Maloof.

I was able to attend a workshop of his before he died.

It was just very inspiring to me because his, his, furniture designs are very organic and very artistic, and he developed a whole new way of doing joinery that allowed that to allow beautiful, graceful lines in a piece of furniture.

So I end up making prototypes for any new piece I'm going to do, and to work out those details.

And you probably see a number of them around the shop.

It's pretty time consuming to do the prototype, but once I decide on the final dimensions and shapes and sizes, then I try to make jigs to reproduce those, to make it easier and quicker to reproduce, and more accurate.

And they're all over the shop too.

Just love the sense of design, and I love that graceful flow of lines and just the the organic stuff.

Once I was introduced to that, I couldn't ignore it anymore.

I had to do it.

It does take more time to do that kind of work, because there's a lot of handwork and it, the joinery you put together in a rough state.

Once it's together, then you have to hand carve it or hand shape it to those really smooth lines.

You can't do that any other way.

It's got to be done by hand.

>>The gallery has since closed, but the highly sought after works that Tim creates are still being made, though retirement looms in his future.

>>I've been thinking about it for like three years now, but I haven't got there yet, so it's soon though.

I don't know, I guess my favorite part is getting to the finish stage and being able to put the finish on and, and, really seeing how it feels and looks.

But there's I enjoy the whole process all the way through.

I have over the years, I've really enjoyed that.