Idahoan Cary Schwarz puts his heart into saddle making–a lifelong student keen to improve and perfect his work.
Now in his fourth decade as a saddler, Schwarz is surely a master craftsman, but that’s something that he’ll never call himself, he said in a telephone interview. Schwarz sees ”becoming a master” as a byproduct of perfecting his craft, whereas “being a master” denotes arriving at the summit of a craft, an idea that he believes could inadvertently bring complacency and dampen creative growth.
“What gets me up and going in the morning is the challenge of learning something new,” he said. With each new project, Schwarz pushes himself to work in an area that he’s never been before, crossing new creative frontiers….