Young painter returns home to learn woodworker’s craft.

The two wood workers bend over the long slab, sanding inside the snake-shaped holes that perforate the slab of African yellow-wood.

There’s not a lot of chit-chat, but the quiet is the companionable silence of people who know each other well.

And that’s hardly a surprise, since the two are father and son.

Reversing the usual trend for young people who leave The Rock for school and move on after college, Jude Ross rejoined his father, Cecil Ross, in the senior Ross’ woodworking studio.

“He’s always said that he wouldn’t let anyone else work in the shop but me,” Jude Ross said. “It seemed like a good time to learn from him.”

Home schooled

The younger Ross graduated from BHS in 1993 and went east to study architecture and painting at Bennington College in Vermont.

Ross, his sister Rain – who returned to Kitsap to teach and perform dance after earning an undergraduate degree at Mt. Holyoke College in Mass. – and a brother, Chy, were immersed in making art since childhood.

Ross says he took the context for granted until he left home.

“I’ve always done woodwork with my dad. I didn’t even think about it; you just picked up a tool and used it,” he said.

“The amazing thing was, when I went off to Bennington, other students had to learn to use tools. I already knew how to use everything.”

Cecil Ross had learned to work with his hands in Durban, South Africa, schooled by his welder father.

His father advised him to avoid learning a trade, and Cecil trained as an engineering draftsman, but soon gravitated to woodworking.

“I worked with my hands anyway,” Cecil Ross said, “and I love it to distraction.”

Later, he advised his own son to choose a career he felt compelled to pursue.

“I said (to Jude), ‘follow your passion. Find something you like to do and do it.”

Jude Ross chose to study painting and to printmaking.

After earning his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Vermont, he completed a Master of Fine Arts in painting at California College of Arts and Crafts (now California College of the Arts) in 2001.

The younger Ross has exhibited his work, even filling a Tokyo gallery for a one-man show in 2002.

Now, sharpened by the years of study and travel, Jude Ross brings his fine arts sensibility to his father’s woodcraft.

The influx of new ideas has enriched the work, both say.

An example, Cecil says, is the design his son worked out to reinforce the slab of yellow-wood with three-dimensional struts.

“That was an artistic problem with this table and he came up with a simple yet elegant solution,” he said.

Jude Ross will continue to develop his own fine arts work, combining light with wood. But he will also collaborate with his father and receive the last coats of varnish on his own wood education.

“It’s a partnership,” Cecil Ross said. “There is a certain amount of guidance I offer, but his creative input is invaluable.”