When a tree is cut down, it marks the end of decades of life rooted in one place. But where some see an ending, Marcus Sims eyes an opportunity for a return.
That’s why he has spent the past 35 years of his life acquiring felled trees, sawing them up and turning mighty planks of lumber into unique pieces of furniture and other custom-built projects.
Sims, 70, was working on around five different projects on a recent visit to his Baltimore workshop. But it was an average workload, and he wasn’t worried about deadlines because a lot of his projects are about time and patience, he said.
The largest project on his plate is for the Takoma Park Maryland Library. Sims has been working with the suburban city for about four years, by his estimate, to turn parts of three willow oak trees that officials cut down into 17 tables. It’s all part of the library’s expansion that is scheduled to be completed by early to midsummer.
The seven tables he’s most excited to construct are for the children’s reading space. Sims said he wants to be playful with the shapes and designs for those tables, especially with using his preferred live-edge finishing, where he retains the natural contours of the wood.
But Sims lets the wood speak to him and doesn’t let himself get too caught up in pesky dimensional specifications or how things should look, he said.
“I want the children to be able to experience a built environment that is not simply the kinds of squares and rectangles that a lot of stuff is,” Sims said. “If you’re going to do artisan-scale stuff, then you have the opportunity to change things up. You don’t have to fit the machine.”
Things like scale, time and the shape of the world have been on Sims’s mind lately, he said. He’s looking at winding down his workload and wants to pass on his business, Treincarnation, to an apprentice who shares his values. And this project with the Takoma Park library in particular has made him reflect on the statement he wants to make to the community through his work.
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“I think we’re having a little problem in our culture with getting too disconnected from nature,” Sims said. “Part of my philosophy is to bring nature into the home.”
Sims has spent his adulthood around Maryland, including Silver Spring and Takoma Park. But he was raised in a military family and bounced around states such as Oklahoma and Georgia and found most of his childhood peace outdoors.
“I think the woods was my refuge,” Sims said. “Now, kids grow up online. I’m not criticizing online but nature still offers us a lot.”
It was this philosophy and Sims’s work that compelled Takoma Park officials to team up with him.
“What we take a lot of pride in is instilling a sense of belonging in the community with these warm colors, these organic shapes and this personality,” said Jessica Jones, library director for Takoma Park Maryland Library.
“My hope is that it doesn’t feel like an anonymous building so that people don’t feel anonymous in it.”
Sims has been waiting awhile to get the green light to build the library’s tables. Jones started working with Takoma Park in March 2021 and inherited files for the Takoma Park Maryland Library and Community Center Redevelopment Project dating back to 2012, she said.
It hasn’t been an easy road to get buy-in, Jones said of public meetings to incorporate community feedback. Sims’s supply is based off four trees, including one planted in memory of Martin Luther King Jr. that the city chose to cut down to expand the space. One was a spruce tree that was in bad shape and, Jones said, would have been cut down regardless of expansion plans.
Jones has worked in libraries in New Mexico and conservative areas of Texas, and whether it’s there or deep-blue Takoma Park, people care about trees, she said.
Jones hopes residents will see their admiration for those trees reflected in Sims’s tables.
“We really wanted to honor the little building that could and the spirit of Takoma Park, so repurposing the trees was one thing we could do,” Jones said.
“I think that it’s a lovely tribute to these trees, especially this memorial tree, that had to come down to be able to integrated into that space on a permanent basis and be seen and used and loved by everybody as they were when they were outside just, you know, in a different way.”
After four years, Sims has a finish line in sight for the library tables. Ambitiously, he could finish it by the end of May, he said. But certain details in the grain of the wood planks he saw before him in Baltimore were still taking shape in his mind, he said.
The years thinking and talking about these Takoma Park trees and lumber would die down soon. So, Sims put on his gloves and returned to work.