We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Doug Meyer. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Doug below.
Alright, Doug thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?
I’ve been making my work professionally for about 14 years. I had previously been the lead foreman for an industrial furniture firm called Cleveland Art. The owner, Jason, showed me the ropes on the business end, such as how and where to market my work, what types of things sell well, and at what price points. I’d been making furniture long before meting Jason, and I think there was an understanding that I had to eventually move on and claim my own design destiny outside of Cleveland Art. I was building up a client list and had a solid footing with different shows I could make money at. One month I had an order for 40 chairs for a gallery in Maine, and I knew I couldn’t do it while working full-time as well. I leaped off the edge and into the ocean of self-employment. My first month was scary. I had the chair order, but the sales I had lined up for the following month fell through. Without the next order, my calendar opened up to build whatever I wanted. I took the entire load up to the Brimfield Antiques Show and nearly sold out. I was back in the game, but for how long? Every month after seemed like the same razor’s edge of how I would make it to the next month. Months became years, and at some point I learned to relax and enjoy the ride. I discovered my own momentum and trajectory over time, replacing the fear of failure. Could I have made it happen sooner? Probably not. I had a long way to go to tighten up my craft, dig into my aesthetic, and learn about the business end of things. The way it all lined up in a perfect order suggests some kind of grander, more-perfect design that took as long as it had to, and not a second sooner. Most of my artist friends are still trying to go pro, and I have been at it well over a decade. This is never lost on me.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
After high school, I spent a semester at Akron University studying sculpture. I was working as a packer in a straw factory making $6.15/hr, and struggling to pay my bills/tuition and attend school full-time. My parents were poor and couldn’t contribute. On a couple occasions, I sold artwork to make my tuition. Why was I paying a school from my art sales to teach me to be an artist? Ha! Here I was a student, starving more than any artist I’d ever known. So after that semester, I was out.
The next couple years I was living my best life, making sculptures and paintings and driving crazy art cars wherever I went. But I was flailing financially. It was 1996, and my brother Rick had just signed up for Job Corps, which piqued my interest. He was going to get paid to learn a trade and further his education, a place I felt was a necessary step forward for my own journey. I had grown tired of the scene I was in and was desperate for something else. With a couple friends, we packed up my van and headed toward California. They ran out of money somewhere around Yellowstone. I offered to foot the bill into California, but nobody wanted to show up flat-broke in the land of grand expenses. We aimed for Salt Lake City, where there were certain to be jobs ahead of the 2000 Winter Olympics. Long story short, my friends moved on from there eventually and I stayed. Within a year I found myself learning to weld at the Clearfield Job Corps Center just north of Salt Lake. It was possibly the single most important thing I’ve ever done for myself.
After welding school, I moved back to Akron. I was homesick and lonely, and knew I could find work in the industrial midwest. Some of the jobs I took on furthered my knowledge of metalworking, such as forming gutters and scupper boxes along with soldered copper roof panels for a roofing company. My time at Moritz Wood and Metal helped me tighten up my craft and learn from a working creative. I built stairs and railings at a firm in Medina. All of these steps were a feather in my cap I would use later in some way shape or form. After my days at Cleveland Art, I was ready to take on anything.
I formed Rustbelt Rebirth LLC on April Fool’s day 2010, because only a fool would choose an art career lol! But seriously, it was just goofy timing. Most of my business has been furniture and sculpture-based. Although, I have recently made inroads to food truck builds and school bus build-outs. Most of my post-pandemic work has been Commercial projects. I designed a host stand, waiting area bench, and a host of other things for a Mexican restaurant, a 32-foot long counter and folding tables for a laundromat, and multiple pieces of furniture and accents for a local distillery. I’ve laid out entire office spaces with desks and tables from Boston to Chicago. Whether it’s a single custom piece or a whole entire environment, I’m capable of building it, transporting it, and installing as well. I’m now in a 5800 sq ft warehouse in Warren, Oh, so I have the space to accommodate larger projects. My skill set, tooling, and capabilities make me unique from other makers in my area. There just aren’t many people who are creative but can also weld and do sheet metal work and follow prints.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
I think most creatives have an interior world they are pushing outward. The exploration of that world is what drives me. I also enjoy helping other creatives explore their world with metalwork. Many people have the vision, but not the capability. What’s funner than helping other people manifest their dreams? That’s what drives my commercial work, which is more of a collaboration with other creatives/business owners. I think of my studio as a Dream Research Laboratory, where we explore and manifest our greatest dreams. Sometimes I even wake up with money in my hands. Bonus!
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I had to unlearn the concept of the hourly-wage career. Work becomes pleasure, and time doesn’t exist in the creative world. Sometimes self-employment means you have to cram two days into one if you want to meet a deadline. Or it means you have nothing to do for a week but clean up your studio. Being a full-time creative means being open to all possibilities all the time. Sometimes you have to throw yourself into the chaos to find work, even if you are introverted and stumble through conversations on occasion. Every aspect of life becomes meaningfully integrated into what you do, as opposed to something you can walk away from at the end of your work day. “Keeping the feelers out” becomes a sustained practice–a sort of faith that the next job will come along as you need it, if you are willing to work religiously to make it happen. One’s personal integrity plays a HUGE part. You always have to make a wrong right again, and work with your clients in a way that everyone wins. If there’s integrity in your person, there is probably integrity in your craft as well. None of this is necessary on an assembly line. You have to care about what you are doing in a profound way, because your reputation is always on the line.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.rustbeltrebirthfurniture.com
- Instagram: @rustbeltrebirth
- Facebook: facebook.com/DougMeyerRustbeltRebirth
Image Credits
portrait courtesy of Sara Bokone