Ross A. Laird

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• kudos
• craft
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From peers, students, and the media, Ross A. Laird has received consistent feedback about the depth of his skill as an educator and the quality of his creative work in multiple disciplines. The list below provides a summary of impressions about his work.

"Ross Laird explores all of the creative themes in simple, elegant and powerful language. He illuminates the special nature of his craft by spinning a web of connections – historical, personal, familial, spiritual, social, and technical – around the objects he creates. Ross tells us that any task large or small -- choosing a design or sharpening tools -- can have meaning far beyond the activity itself and become a path to the mystical. The search for meaning is a pervasive theme in society today. Ross reminds us to look close to home, to the here and now of everyday life, to find that meaning."
(Anne Mauch, President, Crafts Association of BC)

"Laird is every bit the craftsman -- as much of words as of the wooden objects he creates. A marimba for his children, a garden lamp, and the other projects he writes about are only the starting points on the internal journey of creativity his readers are invited to glimpse... The relationship between the materials of the earth and the process of transforming them to conform to the need or desire of an artist has never been delineated so eloquently."
(NAPRA)

"I am so impressed with the way Ross Laird's mind works so that his musings extend far and wide and then return to their subject with a deepened understanding."
(Sharon Butala, author of The Perfection of the Morning and
Wild Stone Heart)

"Laird writes about wood with the voice of a poet and the eye of an artist."
(Marilyn Gear Pilling, in The Hamilton Spectator)

"Laird is a philosopher much influenced by Taoist thinking, and a poet with a great gift for language. With wood or words, his 'seamless joining' is admirable."
(Lawrence Scanlan, in The Globe and Mail)

"Laird is ever-attentive to the moment of creative impulse."
(Kirkus)

"Ross Laird describes two handles he carves as 'sinuous pulls that will arc out from the cabinet face and invite the hand.' I find his words arcing out from each page, gently, sinuously, to invite my mind and heart."
(Michael Gelb, author of How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci)

Awards

Ross Laird is the recipient of the Union Institute's 2000 Sussman Award for "ultimate academic achievement at the doctoral level." Dr. Laird's dissertation, which subsequently was adapted into book form as Grain of Truth: The Ancient Lessons of Craft, was shortlisted for the 2001 Governor General's award (the highest literary award in Canada) and the BC Book Prize. It was voted one of the 100 most important books of 2001 by the Globe and Mail and by Spirituality and Health magazine. Dr. Laird is also the recipient of the 1997 Cecilia B. Lamont poetry prize and the 2003 Communications Award from the BC Association of Clinical Counsellors.