Biography

I am an emerging artist, self-taught in custom lutherie. In my first year of business as Dagmar Custom Guitars, I have succeeded in creating an innovative guitar design that has garnered international attention. The acceptance and excitement around my exclusively unique design has been both humbling and overwhelming.

I began woodworking several years ago, self-taught for practical reasons: I had bought a house and was determined to do the renovations myself. Watching TV shows such as The New Yankee Workshop and This Old House, I picked up tips and became inspired to design and build my own furniture as well. This interest soon became my passion. Even though I was enrolled in a Bachelor of Technology degree at Ryerson University, I decided to leave and make woodworking my life’s work.

While paying the bills with a job in graphic design, I took an Advanced Woodworking course at Niagara College to refine my skills. There I learned everything from shop safety, design and joinery to CNC milling and finishing. Upon the successful completion of this course I accepted a position with a local custom yacht building company, Saga Marine. Over a seven-year period I learned the art of boat building, which included how to read and loft plans, mold making, interior construction and installation along with a complete understanding of composite materials such as fiberglass, carbon fiber and resins.

While at Saga Marine I continued to hone my woodworking skills on the weekends with various projects. I had great fun customizing vintage bicycles into motorized scooters. An idea, which intrigued me, was to find a way to make bicycle fenders out of wood. At this very time I had witnessed a colleague of mine construct a wooden urn - a vase shape using strips of wood cut and glued to shape using precisely-calculated angles. I was struck with the idea of curving wood tightly in two opposing directions. I drafted a plan to construct my first bicycle fender set, calculated all the angles needed and prepared the wood using precise machining. I dove headfirst into the project and was successful at making my first set of solid wood fenders. I took my bicycle to local car shows where it would always gather crowds of interested people. Admirers of the bicycle would sometimes call me an artist, something that I had never considered myself to be.

I developed my fender idea and discovered that I could reverse the curve at the back of the fender set creating a “ducktail”, which is a stylized line of the fender that swoops up at the rear. Once it was realized that I could change directions with the curve the idea of building a guitar rim and body came to me very clearly. I saw a more rewarding and marketable opportunity in the art of custom-made boutique guitars.

Having had such success as a self-taught woodworker, I chose to follow the same self-directed approach to lutherie. I became obsessed with learning about acoustics and guitar construction. I purchased or read everything I could find on the topic, including master luthier Bob Benedetto’s magnificent instructional set of DVD’s, which I studied intensely. The woodworking industry was hit hard even before the current recession, and while building the prototype of my new guitar I had to deal with being laid off twice from different employers. I took my prototype guitar and used it as the model for a business plan and was accepted into the Self Employment Benefits program for entrepreneurs through Niagara College. I was subsidized and mentored in my first year of business, which allowed me to dedicate myself full-time to my calling of becoming a custom guitar builder and innovator. Over this year I was able to evolve my prototype into three world-class guitars. The highlight was receiving the official invitation to show them at the prestigious Montreal Guitar Show. Being invited to participate in this show in the first year of one’s business is virtually unprecedented.

My debut at the Montreal Guitar Show was amazing! I received lots of attention from the media and had one of the busiest booths at the show. I made many contacts, one of which was the incredible opportunity to be commissioned by Queen’s University to build a guitar to help debut and develop their state of the art photonic pickup. Premier Guitar Magazine interviewed me for the video segment of their Montreal Guitar Show coverage (which is also available on YouTube). I have had two major articles written about me in local newspapers and recently scored the cover of Pulse Niagara Magazine. I have also been invited to submit pictures and text descriptions of my guitars for a book by the noted French author Antoine Pascal. The book is to be the most exhaustive collection of guitars in a single volume and will be published in French, German and English with global distribution. Finally, a short documentary film on my lutherie work is in development with Sheridan College.

My self-directed pursuit as an innovator into the world of custom lutherie has been fast and furious. I am humbled by the amount of attention my artistic expression, design and innovation has gathered and I am excited to have had such high levels of success in gaining recognition in such a short period of time. I look forward to developing my ideas even further and continuing a life-long career as a Canadian artist and innovator in the fascinating world of custom lutherie.