Naomi Aubain, Woodworking
Repair Cafes: Esopus, Gardiner, New Paltz
Several years ago, Naomi got a call out of the blue from John Wackman, the founder of Repair Café Hudson Valley and the organizer of the New Paltz Repair Café. He had seen Naomi’s advertisements for her local furniture repair business, Furniture Fixitor, and was calling her to see if she’d be interested in volunteering at a café to do wood repairs. The timing was perfect. “John reaching out was the best kind of invitation as I had seen the repair cafe announcements in the paper and wanted to check it out anyway. My first cafe happened to be the New Paltz 5th anniversary celebration which was a great introduction to the repair cafe world.”
Since then, Naomi has become a familiar face at many Ulster repair cafes as she regularly serves as a woodworking repair coach at Esopus and Gardiner in addition to New Paltz. She also still runs her furniture repair shop in New Paltz where she mainly focuses on structural repairs like tightening loose joints and fixing or replacing broken parts. “I also do seat weaving with cane, rush, Danish cord, etc; and small upholstery jobs for dining room chair seats and similar projects. I don’t do major stripping and refinishing, but I can refer people to colleagues who do.”
In addition to the satisfaction of fixing things, what keeps Naomi coming back to café after café is that she really enjoys working with people who want to learn about the repairs. She finds that helping them be involved in the repair process, empowering them to ask questions and ultimately showing them how to do a repair themselves is often the most rewarding part. Like many other skilled craftspeople, Naomi enjoys crafting across a wide variety of disciplines. Lately in addition to her woodworking she’s also been doing a lot of crochet work as well as sewing. And when the line at her woodworking table dwindles she’s even found herself taking on other repairs at a cafe like gluing, a popular request. “Late one fall a woman came in with a plastic model of the starship Enterprise from the Star Trek TV show. She wanted to use it as a decoration for the top of a Christmas tree and was pretty upset that it had broken. The pieces needed to be coaxed back together and she watched intently as I cut and sliced to get them to fit. Then she helped me hold it together when the glue was applied. It was a cool little project that came out well, and she was so happy with the repair. Sometimes it’s the little things that mean the most.”
Naomi can be contacted for professional work or café questions through her website.
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