Turn out the lights, the party’s over
June 5, 2014Terrebonne council considers no dogs outside at night
June 5, 2014
A pile of discarded boards from a home renovation project is tossed on the side of a roadway. Many who pass the abandoned mess consider it an eyesore, while others do not pay attention to it all.
Thibodaux’s David Bergeron envisions something much greater for the scrap materials – a project that turns trash into treasure.
When he started his restoration projects more than 14 years ago, people were hesitant when they learned the colorful picture frames with in-depth attention to detail in the woodwork were once part of the trash.
Today, the perception of his work has undergone a huge turnaround.
Bearing the name Bergeron Woodworks, his creations are sold in more than 20 stores throughout the United States, as well as galleries, art shows and festivals.
“The whole building out of the trash movement has gotten bigger within the last couple of years,” Bergeron said. “Now you tell people it comes out of the trash and they actually come to it.”
Since all of the materials for his handcrafted armoires, chests, mirrors, frames and boxes are random pickings from trash sites, his final product is reached by “putting together a puzzle.”
“Custom work is always different. It’ always a challenge,” he said. “All the pattern work makes you see all that stuff you didn’t pay attention to in geometry.”
A native of New Orleans, Bergeron enjoys his work not only for the art that it provides, but for the history it preserves in the city he loves and grew up in.
“The wood comes from structures that are well over 100 years old for most of them. You can see it in the grain of the wood. The lines are real fine,” he said.
The frameworks for most of his designs are consistent, but the color palette from one piece to the next is truly one-of-a-kind.
“The color palette is weird because it always changes,” he said pointing to a panel of colors in his workshop. “The color palette of New Orleans can get very Caribbean. You don’t notice that as much when you’re driving around.”
After Hurricane Katrina, Bergeron and his wife moved from New Orleans to the Thibodaux area, and he shortened his commute to work when he set up shop in an aluminum building behind his house.
While he continues to find the majority of his materials from sites in New Orleans, he does find materials while roaming the streets of Houma-Thibodaux.
“Our goal has always been to keep using stuff out of landfills,” he said. “I pull anything I think we can do something with. Everything we do comes out of the trash.”
His environmental contribution may seem minute compared to the amount of trash that enters landfills everyday, but keeping things in perspective, Bergeron knows the amount of trash he hauls for restoration.
“At least once a month I’m saving an 18 wheeler of stuff from going in the trash,” he said. “After 15 years, if you add up the amount of weight we’ve moved, that’s pretty incredible.”
Keeping with the environmental aspect of his work, Bergeron does not allow for any waste in his workshop, rather he let’s the waste shape his design.
“Allowing the waste to shape your design changes everything,” he said. “The one thing I like about woodwork is that you can do it your entire life and there is still something to learn, so we try new stuff pretty regularly.”
Growing up, the craftsman was surrounded by creativity and people who were in the business of making things. His grandpa was a woodworker, his mother a seamstress and his dad worked with ornamental iron.
After studying biology in college, Bergeron bartended for a while and then he started construction work. In the beginning, he had a traditional job working in a mill shop where he built hotel and restaurant furniture.
He had the privilege of working under a master carpenter, whom he credits for his passion of woodwork.
“He was like an old hippie master carpenter so he taught me a lot and that’s when I really got into woodwork,” he said. “When you see fine woodwork, you realize there is something to it.”
The shop he was working for began to downsize in 1999, and Bergeron was laid off.
With some encouragement form his wife and his friends, he took on Bergeron Woodworks full time, and the story of his art constructed itself from there.
He has one full-time worker at his shop and a part-timer who comes at random times during the week. As a team, they sell wholesale items in stores from Portland, Oregon to Providence, Rhode Island. All the while, he is sure to supply his first wholesaler, Mignon Faget, who recruited him less than a year after he started the endeavor full time.
Moving forward, Bergeron continues to prepare for shows when he is on the road and fields orders for custom pieces where people give him specific dimensions.
There are no plans for a “specific line of furniture,” because he does not want to take away from the creativity held by each project.
Since the craftsman began salvaging wood from scrap piles and preserving history, he has loved every minute of the craft. With business demand seeing continual growth, he doesn’t plan on slowing down his take on the preservation of south Louisiana’s history anytime in the future.
“With us focusing on the historical materials, it’s literally modern artifacts we’re creating,” Bergeron said about his work. “It’s the trash plus the story of the trash.”
“It’s nice to see something that goes from the trash to something someone loves,” he added.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated Bergeron Woodworks sells wholesale items to retailers “from Portland, Oregon to Providence, Massachusetts.” Providence, of course, is located in Rhode Island. We apologize for the error.
Armoires and trunks are among artist David Bergeron’s many creations made from wood he pulls from the trash.Bergeron has applied the art for more than 14 years. He estimates he saves an 18-wheeler’s worth of wood from finding its way to the landfill each month, and in turn, he produces colorful pieces that have a new utility.
