Sky's the Limit
By Hannah Stiff
photo credit: Hannah Stiff
Area man creates artistic high-end bunk rooms & floating beds
J
ason Clary is one of those people whose career found him unsuspecting. One day, 17 years ago, Clary was driving his Fed Ex truck along his usual route when a customer mentioned a pile of barn wood he was going to turn into a bonfire. Clary offered to haul the wood away and his customer happily agreed. Clary couldn’t sleep that night. So, he trudged to the garage and began pulling nails out of the barnwood. After the nails were gone, Clary began adding new ones. By the following morning, the pile of barnwood was transformed into a hutch. After showing off photos of his inaugural woodworking project, one of Clary’s friends who worked at Chico Hot Springs sold his skills upriver. Clary soon got a phone call asking him to create rustic furniture for multiple Chico guest cabins. As Clary built coat racks, dressers and benches to fill the cabins, he realized how much he enjoyed this hobby work. Enough, he
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decided, to quit Fed Ex and pursue furniture making as his fulltime occupation. Word of his craftsmanship spread. Though he never engaged in formal marketing campaigns, fancy websites, or social media posts, business, much like his career, found him. As his new career kicked into high gear, Clary began teaching himself how to create inventive pieces. He took the hoods of rusty, faded-paint pickup trucks and turned them into the backs of fat bottom chairs. He turned intricate designs on a lathe to form massive bed posts and oversized candelabras. And then, he learned to make bunk beds. Not the hunting cabin, springy cheap mattress kind either. Clary was enlisted to make bunkbeds in the Yellowstone Club. More than utilitarian, Clary began creating whole bunk room scenes. For one client, Clary replicated an iconic red bus from London. Instead of well-used bus seats inside, he stacked custom bunkbeds. The red bus bunkbeds were positioned in a room wallpapered with black and white London landmarks. For others, Clary has created pickup truck bunk beds, mountain modern
