Post by Matty.
On May 20th OWS had the opportunity to give back to the community by participating in PS Arts 25th anniversary benefit. Typically a Friday evening for us at the shop entails burning scrap wood in our old Weber grill and sipping a well deserved adult beverage. Not that night. Lee and Matty, along with Jeff and Charles from Angel City Lumber, ventured to the big city lights of Hollywood.
The party was held at NeueHouse Hollywood (a fancy schmancy event space). The 4 of us blew the sawdust off our boots, combed our hair, and packed a few extra copies of our head shots. (Just kidding, Lee doesn’t have a head shot). PS Arts is a Los Angeles organization dedicated to improving the lives of children by providing arts education to underserved public schools and communities. The evening’s benefit was an opportunity to raise money through a silent auction and donations. The PS Arts team created a night of ‘imagination, innovation and play for adults’. That’s where we came in. We set up a station equipped with two bench top drill presses and ran a tea candle holder workshop.
Guests picked out a block of salvaged local silver maple (milled by Angel City Lumber), marked their layout, drilled a shallow round pocket, hand sanded and waxed–all within a few minutes.
What appeared to be a very rudimentary exercise proved to be a lot of fun. Many of the adults attending had never had the opportunity to use a drill before.
In a few short hours we cycled through almost 200 out of the 400 people attending. It was a huge hit! The key was finding a project that was quick, quiet, easy and safe enough for a party atmosphere.
PS Arts is a terrific organization and we were pleased to lend a hand to a good cause. Learn more about them on their website.
