“We went to look at a bed frame and it was thousands of dollars and we didn’t have any money,” Houghtaling said. “I just thought ‘I’m handy. What’s so hard about building a bed?’ So, I built a bed frame that I ended up burning a few years later because I made a better one.”

The most beautiful aspect of working with wood for Houghtaling is the imperfections.

“The reason I’m drawn to flaws is because I think there is great perfection in imperfection,” she said. “I think that is where most great art comes from even if it looks perfect. Knots and cracks. You know that’s all time and to me that’s the beautiful part of wood.”

Houghtaling said that since trees are knocked down and turned to lumber, the least she could do is use every piece of the wood. She noted how each knot and “imperfection” tells a story and gives the wood more character.

“It’s true. I do love wood more than I love people,” Houghtaling joked. “I see trees and they’re amazing. Humans are amazing too, but trees have been here much longer than we have and they’re much more resilient.”

The most fulfilling part of woodworking for Houghtaling is saying goodbye to a piece once she has completed making it. She said she gets to know each piece of wood really well because she spends so much time working on it, so when it’s finished it’s a relief.

Each piece that Houghtaling creates requires anywhere from one hour for a small carved bird to 30 hours for seven-foot wooden doors to 80 hours for a large intricate table. She said that her favorite piece is always the one she is currently working on because she wants the most recent piece to be her best. Houghtaling said art is important and that it’s a shame when art is ignored.

“Art is one of those things that makes us social creatures,” Houghtaling said. “It makes us investigate. It forces us into uncomfortable zones. There is a lot of art out there that I could be like ‘ew, I don’t like that’ but I appreciate it with every fiber of my being.”

Houghtaling is one of 40 artists who is featured in the Greater Ithaca Art Trail Group Exhibit, which is curated by the Community Arts Partnership (CAP) Artspace.

“Before 2021, the Art Trail was solely live studio visits,” Robin Schwartz, the CAP Program Director said. “The pandemic gave us the opportunity to rethink how we connect artists with audiences.”

Houghtaling said she has experienced a ton of discrimination in her life for being a woman woodworker.

“The minute I start talking with them, they realize I can make all of these things, I can probably cook better than them and I can brew beer and I built a teardrop trailer,” Houghtaling said. “So, when all of these things start coming out, I’m connecting with people who want to discriminate against me really badly.”

Houghtaling said it’s okay to be an artist, it’s okay to be whatever you identify as, and that art can create an equal playing field because art belongs to us all. As a queer woman, Houghtaling said she hopes to inspire creativity and encourage other people to be unapologetically themselves.

“At this stage of my life, I look at it like ‘what can I bring to the table?’” she explained. “So, if someone is going to come up to me and be tense because maybe they don’t know how I gender myself, or my sexuality or because I have a mohawk or maybe because I can woodwork better than them, sorry not sorry.”