Editor’s Note: The Inertia is excited to head to Ventura, Calif. with Flying Embers, a proud member of Ventura’s vibrant community. This month, CREATORS will profile individuals making innovative contributions to surf and outdoor culture in “The City of Good Fortune.” Color us lucky to hang with purveyors of tasty, hard booch and feature Ventura’s inspiring humans for the next four weeks. Stay tuned.
“I love making furniture, but you can’t ride furniture down a mountain.” So says Darrick Rasmussen, woodworker in Ventura, California. It’s a fantastic place for a woodworker to ply his trade, full of other people who are creating beautiful things with their hands.
Rasmussen’s journey to becoming a woodworker started when he was just a kid, staring at old furniture at the flea markets he used to visit with his mom. He grew up in Orange County, surfing and skateboarding with occasional trips to the mountains. The latter would eventually lead him to his love of making wooden snowboards.
When he was in his 20s, he more seriously embraced the craft of making furniture. He enrolled in a handful of community college wood-working classes in Huntington Beach, but then decided he needed something a little more intensive.
That came in the form of a two-year program in fine woodworking at the fittingly named College of the Redwood in Northern California. And then, of course, he was out on his own, forging his own way, carving out his own path the same way he carves wood.
He does it because he loves the creative process, but also because he loves the fact that someone else will enjoy his creation. Some things, though, he enjoys building a little more than others.
“You make a piece of furniture for someone, and it’s sitting in their house, and they enjoy it every day, which is awesome,” he says. “But making a snowboard or a piece of equipment that someone’s going to take out into nature? That’s truly special.”
Shot and edited by Kyle Maclennan. Follow Kyle @kylemacvisuals on Instagram.
Watch our most recent episode of CREATORS presented by Flying Embers (the Ventura edition) starring Michael Arenal here.
