Minnesota North Outdoors

Hello, My name is Don Erickson and I started www.dderickson.com to bring a little nature inside through art.

Just to give you a little background on me, I am 47 years old and live with my wife  of 25 years in Lakeville Minn. We have 2 boys, 24 and 21 years old. I am a avid fisherman and fishing collector. I have a room in my home that is dedicated to my years of fishing and fishing antiques. I have 113 antique fishing reels, around 100 lures, couple old boat motors and other odds and ends. 

             The whole idea for www.dderickson.com came from a boring weekend afternoon home alone 5 years ago. With my wife out of town and kids busy with work I found myself with nothing  to do.

While sitting in my basement I noticed a large wooden boat shelf leaned up against the wall, which I had received the previous Christmas, and the idea was born. One of the rooms in my house was built like a cabin (wall to wall windows and cedar woodwork) which I had been decorating with my antique fishing collection that I had been gathering over the years.

Between my love of fishing and the lack of outdoors related furniture I thought that it could make a very cool table. Over the next few weeks, I would go in my basement after work - and when I had nothing to do on the weekends - and try to build myself a little bit of the lake front for my living room.

            My first table, was a larger coffee table. It consisted of some of my antiques: A Billy bass and a sandpaper bottom. As I would walk by it different ideas would come to mind - rocks, weeds, smaller wooden and plastic fish. It slowly morphed into a lily pad crappie table.

I then realized I had other smaller boat shelves and no small end tables in my porch, so I went to work making smaller, more detailed boats from what I learned before.

 After I finished with those, I sent some pictures to friends and family, who seemed impressed and interested, and I started making the tables for them as well. They helped grow my idea, with ideas of their own, like putting fish in scenes below the tables, and adding docks to the smaller tables. The docks not only added to the scenery (which I could now put more on the docks like benches and the like), but also made them more conventional, as they could be used as more table space as well.

            Which brings us today - As the seasons change from snow and cold to rain and warmth, thoughts of open water, flying bobbers and splashing fish start to play in my head.

This starts the wheels of my artistic process and my mind starts to flood with my next table ideas. So many possible designs to pick from -  The canoe quietly approaching a school of trout or the old wooden boat above the hungry walleye and bass chasing the same dinner.

In the weeks ahead I will unveil just a couple of the endless choices. I would love to hear your ideas and maybe bring nature inside for you.