Tom Frink won't tell you the secret behind his art, but it's catching the eye of consumers and gallery owners.
The Loveland man is using a method perfected by his father decades ago to infuse dye into live aspen trees. The trees drink up the tint for about six months, creating a colorful marbling in their trunks and branches.Frink then logs the trees, dries the wood and crafts the pieces into colorful bowls and plates in his workshop. The unique craftsmanship - marketed under the business name of Aspen Grove - is catching the eye of a new generation of customers and gallery owners and making a new name for the longtime Loveland family.
Just don't ask Frink how he does it. The wood-coloring process is something his own mother never even knew.
"We've kept it pretty secret," said Frink, 44, standing on wood shavings in his shop south of Loveland, his blue apron made dull from a coating of sawdust. "People don't believe it when they see it. So far no one's been able to color wood like this."
The unique finished product has a growing appeal. Frink's bowls are on display at Denver International Airport and in Breckenridge and are available at shops in Estes Park, Kittredge and Loveland.
"I've carried the Frinks' product for about a year now, and I've probably sold 25 to 30 pieces," said Dale Traut, owner of The Bear's Den.
"It's hard to explain to people," he said. "They don't quite get it when you tell them what is done" to achieve the coloring.
"But I think that's what makes it stand out," he said.
Although many methods exist to color wood, it's the infusion process that separates Frink's work from others.
Other artisans apply color to cut wood, Frink said, but "all you're doing is staining it. I wanted something that's different."
The appeal of color-infused wood: "It's the fact that it wasn't stained. It isn't painted on. You can't buy my bowls anywhere else in the world."
Frink maintains no one else has gotten the trees to drink up the coloring, a process that took thousands of test runs to perfect.
Frink's father, Leroy, came up with the idea based on the premise that carnation growers could color their flowers by feeding them dye. However, naysayers claimed it couldn't be done with trees.
Leroy Frink proved them wrong. In the 1960s he purchased a stand of about 500 aspen trees and force-fed them colored dye. Months later the trees were logged and cut into blue, red and yellow planks and blocks. Some of the wood was made into paneling for homes in Yampa, and the rest was set aside to dry.
At about age 25, the younger Frink left his father's business of making jewelry and other wooden crafts. Recently, however, Tom Frink has returned to the family business - and that old colored woodpile - to create new designs from his father's wood and bring back the family business.
Frink also has returned to his father's secret process to prepare a new batch of trees. And he's converted an old shed into a kiln, which shortens the drying time from eight or 10 years to less than three months.
"We've probably barely scratched the surface of what we could do with this wood," Frink said. "But I love making bowls. That's what I do. I just enjoy it."
In an old milk barn-turned-woodshop, Frink spends hours each day leaning against the cold yellow handles of his wood lathe, arthritic arms taut as he carves deep bowls from colored blocks.
Curly wood shavings fly into the air, some of them catching Frink's salt and pepper locks until he stops to feel the smooth sides of the hewn bowl.
"The thing that drew my dad and me to aspen is it's a native product," Frink said.
Popular items include salad bowls and plates, which range in price from $15 to $90, depending on the size. Frink's son, Shawn, 18, has taken up the art of turning vases from the wood blocks, a delicate procedure for which Shawn's father doesn't possess the knack.
Together, they hope to make a new name for what has become a Frink tradition.
"We've started to get out there, but it's been tough," Frink said. Marketing is a lot different from the time when his father made jewelry and sold it wholesale to shops.
"Back then Loveland was six or 7,000 (in population). People knew people," he said.
But people are coming to know Frink's second generation of wooden work.
"The best thing someone ever told me was it is usable art."