Vendor Spotlight: Maxwoods

​If you’ve wandered through the market and found yourself drawn to a table filled with carved lighthouses, mushroom clusters, and whimsical forest scenes, chances are you’ve met Max of Maxwoods.

Behind his displayed creations you can find him carving away on his next project. Max is a soft-spoken artist whose love for nature and carving has quietly shaped a decade long creative journey, one that started not with a plan, but with an injury. 

“It all started with my back” Max says. After two herniated discs forced him to step away from the more active lifestyle he once enjoyed, he was left searching for something to fill the time. What began as a therapeutic hobby soon turned into something more. “I needed something to do, something to keep my hands busy”. 
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Max began foraging driftwood from secluded beaches and plants from forest trails across southern Ontario. His earlier works consisted of incense burners and natural floral arrangements and now focuses primarily on hand carved sculptures of faces, lighthouses, florals, and mushrooms. “The wood tells me what it wants to be” he explains. “If its long, probably a lighthouse, if its short and stubby, flowers or mushrooms”.

Entirely self taught, Max spent the next ten years honing his craft. A couple books, a couple of videos, but mostly just learning by doing. That hands on process helped him develop a deeply intuitive style. Each piece shaped by the bark’s texture, size, and place of origin. Everything he uses is hand foraged, “if I don't collect it myself, I don’t feel connected 
enough to carve it”. 
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The connection to the land is central to his process and work. Max’s favorite carving material is cottonwood bark. It’s a soft, thick bark ideal for detail work. It’s somewhat rare around St. Thomas. So, he goes on seasonal foraging trips, collecting bark from Long Point to Leamington, as far as the Kingston area. He’ll go out for the day, sit by the cliffs, have a 
fire, forest bathe. He says that just being out there is enough to fill his tank creatively. Afterwards he says, “the next week is usually great for carving”. 

The leap from carving at home to selling at the market came out of an urging from family and friends, especially his sister, an artist in Toronto who helped him prepare and sign up for his first Horton market six years ago. He never really planned to sell, and says it still feels weird sometimes. “I don’t see it as selling, I see it as a show, a way to get feedback and 
keep going”.
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That spirit of authenticity runs through every piece he creates. It is a deeply personal process inspired by long walks, campfires, and the influence of growing up with artistic grandparents, memories of whittling sticks as a kid. Now carving in his day-to-day life, he admits with a grin, “I’m not making too much money, but just enough, and that’s how I like it.”
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If not carving, you can find him tending to his garden, finding time to connect with the earth in his small, contained oasis of nature in this backyard a stone throws away from busy Talbot Street.

​Max didn’t set out to become a vendor, he set out to heal, keep busy, and reconnect with something elemental. His creations now finding their way into homes, hearts, and Saturday mornings at Horton. A reminder that creativity often takes root in the most unexpected places and times, and sometimes, a walk in the woods is all it takes.

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