Ed Lewis has always done things his way. Anyway who took chemistry from him while he was a teacher at The McCallie School could tell you that. So could the divers who took lessons from him. He had a reputation in the 1970s as being the best diving coach in town, despite the fact that he never got in a pool in his life.
“That’s true,” he says.
So it shouldn’t surprise anybody surrounded by the bowls, pens, vases and Christmas ornaments that the woodworker has turned that Lewis is firmly serious when he says, “I am not an artist. I am so left brain, my head does this,” and then he plops his left ear on his left shoulder.
Later, he says he didn’t make all of the beautiful pieces in his open studio sale this weekend “for the show. I did this for my sanity.”
Wife Elise is showing her kumihimo jewelry pieces during the show as well. Kumihimo is a traditional Japanese technique of braiding strands, often of silk, into cords that can be adapted for various uses.