Grant Merritt

About the Artist

Grant Merritt grew up in Honolulu and graduated from University High School in 1965. Favorite classes were art, P.E. and shop. Not necessarily in that order. Mostly he liked making stuff. Whatever kine stuff.  Junior year art teacher saw this and put Grant in another room to make stuff on the potter’s wheel, mostly to get him out of class so everybody else could concentrate. This lead over time to a degree in ceramics from Claude Horan and Harue McVay, aka the UH ceramics department. Grant had been taking sculpture classes and realized there were other media out there that were interesting too. So, he started building houses, fixing cars and whatever else came up, all the while developing an overpowering but irrelevant interest in science, history and other higher brow stuff.

It must be understood that Grant is hard-core unemployable, and could never keep a real job.

Grant got his contractor’s license in the early 1970’s and never used it. He got a shop space in the old Iron Works and tried to make a living building custom furniture. Barely (really not) making a subsistance wage and having a daughter who needed to eat, Grant eventually started Sawdust, which was a millwork shop making wooden moldings. LO! A living wage!

Somewhere during his 35-year tenure as owner of Sawdust, Grant started turning again (something he started in 8th grade). The product is what you see here.