Finding His Inner Artist After Starting As A Gunsmith, Dan Donley Carves His Niche As A Furniture Maker

There was a time when Dan Donley thought he would always be satisfied as a gunsmith.

He drew pleasure from the trade’s demand for detail and the challenge of carving wooden stocks.

But the chance that someone could die from one of his weapons left him cold.

He moved on.

Five years ago, Donley discovered his art, and now his unique style of hand-carved furniture is finding its way into Inland Northwest homes.

Donley blends his creative vision with fine craftsmanship to come up with pieces that are at once decorative and practical.

“I was an artist all my life,” said Donley, 45. “I just needed to give myself an allowance for those feelings, to indulge in them.”

Today, his carved and painted furniture can be seen at nearly a dozen galleries throughout the Pacific Northwest, including the Twin Totems Gallery on Green Bluff Road.

He embellishes the imagery of Native American art, both from Pacific Northwest and Southwest traditions.

“People are drawn right to it,” said Melanie Rodd, owner of Twin Totems.

“He has taken something that’s old and traditional and applied it to something utilitarian.”

For example, a glass-topped coffee table, done in Eastern pine, displays four hand-carved wolves around a Southwestern motif.

The table’s carving stands out in relief because Donley carefully bevels along the edges of the carving. The design was painted in complementary shades of gray, blue and red, and the wood was finished in a light natural tone.

“Of all the pieces I’ve made, artistically it’s one of my best,” he said.

The buyers ordered the table as a set of three pieces for their living room, and intend to use the coffee table for meditation.

“As soon as I started carving it, I had a dream about a wolf attacking my leg,” Donley said.

Such dreams, he explained, may show how hard he tries to create images that are faithful to nature and tradition.

Donley traces his adulthood to the mountains of Colorado and a counterculture lifestyle of the 1970s.

He learned gunsmithing at Trinidad State Junior College and opened a shop in Colorado after earning a degree.

To supplement his income, he worked in a mine, although his priority was always his craft work. He once built a flintlock pistol.

He moved to north central Washington in the 1980s only to follow a similar pattern of working for blue-collar wages and gunsmithing on the side.

For a time, Donley tried organic farming by raising goats and selling vegetables from his 21-acre place on the Kettle River just south of the Canadian border.

As the art began to emerge, Ferry County offered the quiet existence he needed for pensive pursuit, but few consumers eager to buy.

Donley had to reach out to other communities to make sales, and found himself increasingly comfortable with the social milieu of galleries and clients.

“For me, it’s a re-entry into the world,” he said.

“You can be an artist but not have a life. All of a sudden, people are my life.”

Along with the Twin Totems Gallery, Donley shows pieces in Twisp, Chelan and Duvall in Washington; Coeur d’Alene, Sandpoint, Lewiston and Sun Valley in Idaho, and Hamilton and Missoula in Montana.

He delivers the furniture to galleries and has probably $15,000 worth of work on display, waiting to be sold.

Gallery owners take full advantage of the pieces. They use them to show off smaller art objects like pottery or sculptures.

“People are always looking for a nice place to put a bronze,” he said.

“It’s fun to make things and see who shows up to buy them.”

Donley is willing to design pieces to order. He meets with clients, even visits their homes, in an effort to create carvings that are in spiritual harmony with the surroundings. He has studied the Chinese practice of feng shui, an ancient way of beneficial arrangement in the home.

In addition to furniture, Donley carves totem poles and wooden sentries. One of his more startling totems shows a carved Polynesian mask face.

An armoire, done in yellow pine, has two large geckos on the door.

A clothing chest with a crackled-paint finish features a native-inspired salmon eagle icon.

Two great blue herons pose under a deep red setting sun on another chest.

The furniture itself is precise. Donley joins the wood seamlessly, and uses dowels for structural strength.

His colors come from milk paint bought from the Old Fashioned Milk Paint Co. of Groton, Mass. He blends it by hand.

Under his Blue Raven Design logo, Donley will be showing work at the spring arts and crafts show at the Spokane Interstate Fairgrounds on March 3 through 5.

At times, he said, he sees himself answering a mystical call embedded in his soul from an earlier, more primitive life.

“You can’t know those things. You can only guess,” he said.

He said he thinks his work resonates with people because it marries craftsmanship with fine art.

In today’s art world, he said, multi-media expression is “a badge of your seriousness as an artist.”