Most people don’t consider trips to the dumpster as creative. They toss construction material like ripped up boards and discarded flooring into landfills without a second thought. It is all garbage to them. Not to Joe Canelos though. Joseph “Joe” Canelos turns this garbage into design. Canelos repurposes these materials into his designs for custom-made furniture pieces in hopes they will become cherished heirlooms that will last long into the future.
A master craftsperson, Canelos has established a business, Canelos Studio, which sources from demolitions and discarded material waste at places such as flooring companies. From these materials, he designs and fashions what he calls “lasting pieces of functional art” for the home. He is committed to sustainability and community, and producing bespoke pieces out of quality, locally sourced materials.
A look at his designs reveals one-of-a-kind pieces that stand out in any room. Last year, for example, Canelos collaborated with Maryline Damour of design firm Damour Drake to craft a commissioned custom piece for the Morning Room displayed in the Kingston Design Showhouse. He created a hexagonal china cabinet out of salvaged mahogany with white oak details. He has also crafted a tripod coffee table out of various reclaimed hardwoods and a globe stand of reclaimed mahogany and white oak. Canelos says he likes using pieces of wood “that are on the brink” of being carted away to landfills and takes obvious pleasure in the reclamation of materials. “Each piece has a story,” he adds. “I never make the same piece twice.”
Take the honeycomb artwork he made to display records in a wall cabinet. Every part of it is repurposed, for example, from flooring that he salvaged at a home in Claverack. Lest one think he is raiding dumpsters in a happenstance way, his materials come from working as a social entrepreneur within the community to establish relationships through which he obtains so-called waste materials.
He arrived at this option in a significant way. By working in fabrication and production, doing storefronts and theater sets he saw the waste first-hand. Canelos cites a book-signing event for which he helped construct a pop-up. “You put it in, the event goes on, and then you go down and do the strike,” he explains of the fast process of building a set and then tearing it down after a single use. He saw just how much very good wood and other materials were thrown way. “The things we were tossing hurt my soul,” Canelos says. These days, he arranges to get floorboards and other useful materials that places are getting rid of to design and construct his pieces.
The process of establishing a studio sounds very much like a journey in the same way that a piece of reclaimed wood takes a journey to become a completed grandfather globe stand, flamingo writing desk, or tripod coffee table that he ultimately crafts. He has been constructing one thing or another for at least 10 years, he says, and worked in fiberglass, carbon fiber, and metals before. He studied industrial design and maintained an interest in theater. Two years ago, he honed his focus into what he calls “functional art pieces for the home” and started Canelos Studio, based in New Paltz, where he lives. His studio is an insulated garage in his home.
Some who establish new businesses look to scale up. Canelos kind of eschews business plan talk and emphasizes that he wants to work closely with homeowners to craft an entirely new type of piece that will elevate a space in their home and become a prized heirloom. “If I make four or five pieces a year for people, that could be my whole business plan,” he says. This is not an exaggeration as is evident when Canelos explains how he measures an element to a 32nd of an inch or needs an ultra-perfect edge to craft the tight cut of a sliding dovetail joint. Such precision takes time. Still, he muses about producing a line of furniture designs.
Canelos’ conversations are sprinkled with many influences from the Fibonacci spiral in nature and feng shui to Steve Jobs and the superhero Iron Man. “I became intrigued by the forms and shapes of Iron Man…it’s the perfect juncture of a human and an auto body. Everything in his suit is mechanical and believable,” he says. This obsession happened when he had a terrible bike crash in his teens, suffering a horrible injury that required three surgeries. He could not walk for about five months. He became fixated on building an Iron Man suit and dove into electronics and circuitry.
His influences are also in his family. His father is a cabinet maker and an oil painter. His mother is an early childhood educator who is very crafty. He talks about visualizing very early on that ideas have colors. He also recalls at 3 years old he began to learn about tools.
The Hudson Valley also feeds Canelos’ immensely curious and creative nature. “There’s something in the water here that makes everyone creative,” he observes adding, “there’s a serene and spiritual energy about the whole place.”
For Canelos, creating is as much about sourcing and reclaiming what has already been produced away from waste into new uses, visions, and designs. “Why is waste built into capitalism?” he asks. He is inspired by the sustainability fostered by Habitat for Humanity, Buy Nothing New Paltz, and the Too Good to Go app that helps consumers link with businesses selling surplus food cheaply.
This master craftsman and social entrepreneur aims to help shape a world where what he reclaims and repurposes benefits companies, subtracts from the planet’s waste, and adds up to lasting functional pieces of art and beauty. As Canelos sees it, “I’m all about a win-win-win situation. There is no loser. The solutions are the ones we need to be focused on.”
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