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Quin Gregory works on a custom piece for a show with fellow artisan Joe Bonner at The Music Studio. The show is being billed as a “Battle of the Builders” competition, with the winner being announced during an afterparty at Pour09 Friday night. Photo made Thursday, September 15, 2022 Kim Brent/Beaumont Enterprise
Joe Bonner works on a custom piece for a show with fellow artisan Quin Gregory at The Music Studio. The show is being billed as a “Battle of the Builders” competition, with the winner being announced during an afterparty at Pour09 Friday night. Photo made Thursday, September 15, 2022 Kim Brent/Beaumont Enterprise
Quin Gregory works on a custom piece for a show with fellow artisan Joe Bonner at The Music Studio. The show is being billed as a “Battle of the Builders” competition, with the winner being announced during an afterparty at Pour09 Friday night. Photo made Thursday, September 15, 2022 Kim Brent/Beaumont Enterprise
Joe Bonner works on a custom piece for a show with fellow artisan Quin Gregory at The Music Studio. The show is being billed as a “Battle of the Builders” competition, with the winner being announced during an afterparty at Pour09 Friday night. Photo made Thursday, September 15, 2022 Kim Brent/Beaumont Enterprise
A finished coffee bar themed cabinet made by Joe Bonner is among the items he and Quin Gregory will show at The Music Studio. The show is being billed as a “Battle of the Builders” competition, with the winner being announced during an afterparty at Pour09 Friday night. Photo made Thursday, September 15, 2022 Kim Brent/Beaumont Enterprise
Quin Gregory works on a custom piece for a show with fellow artisan Joe Bonner at The Music Studio. The show is being billed as a “Battle of the Builders” competition, with the winner being announced during an afterparty at Pour09 Friday night. Photo made Thursday, September 15, 2022 Kim Brent/Beaumont Enterprise
Joe Bonner works on a custom piece for a show with fellow artisan Quin Gregory (right) at The Music Studio. The show is being billed as a “Battle of the Builders” competition, with the winner being announced during an afterparty at Pour09 Friday night. Photo made Thursday, September 15, 2022 Kim Brent/Beaumont Enterprise
Joe Bonner measures and cuts more wood pieces as he prepares for a show with fellow artisan Joe Bonner at The Music Studio. The show is being billed as a “Battle of the Builders” competition, with the winner being announced during an afterparty at Pour09 Friday night. Photo made Thursday, September 15, 2022 Kim Brent/Beaumont Enterprise
Finished pieces sit among others in progress as Quin Gregory and Joe Bonner work in their warehouse space and prepare for their show at The Music Studio. The show is being billed as a “Battle of the Builders” competition, with the winner being announced during an afterparty at Pour09 Friday night. Photo made Thursday, September 15, 2022 Kim Brent/Beaumont Enterprise
Quin Gregory works on a custom piece for a show with fellow artisan Joe Bonner at The Music Studio. The show is being billed as a “Battle of the Builders” competition, with the winner being announced during an afterparty at Pour09 Friday night. Photo made Thursday, September 15, 2022 Kim Brent/Beaumont Enterprise
Quin Gregory works on a custom piece for a show with fellow artisan Joe Bonner at The Music Studio. The show is being billed as a “Battle of the Builders” competition, with the winner being announced during an afterparty at Pour09 Friday night. Photo made Thursday, September 15, 2022 Kim Brent/Beaumont Enterprise
Building a life is a lot like building a piece of custom furniture from scratch.
It doesn’t come with a blueprint, and it may not follow a straight path from start to finish.
It happens piece by piece, requiring patience and skill learned through trial and error.
You make the necessary adjustments as you go, ensuring all the parts fit together in just the right places at just the right times.
And then you have a uniquely crafted finished product that checks two key boxes: One, you did something that makes you happy and fulfilled. Two, you did something that makes someone else happy and fulfilled.
That’s a life-lesson path that Beaumont’s Quin Gregory and Joe Bonner have journeyed, which they’re eager to share with youth in Southeast Texas in their joint show at The Music Studio, which opened Friday and continues through December.
The show’s called it “Battle of the Builders.”
“It’s pretty much a cliché, but they say you don’t make a name for yourself without some kind of controversy,” Gregory said.
Gregory also said making the show a competition ups the ante and creates more buzz.
Hence the idea for a builder showdown, or what Gregory and Bonner termed “a versus.”
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“Certain projects, I’ve been working on for a while,” Bonner said.
This show has moved the duo off the back-burner amid the deadline demands of custom jobs.
“A lot of our work is custom, so this show will show people work they haven’t seen before,” Gregory said.
And for those seeing their work for the first time, “they’ll be able to see stuff and maybe ask for a different color or size” of pieces they’d like for their own home or office, he said.
The work is mostly made from scratch, but they have re-purposed old pieces of furniture, or refurbished and embellished older and antique furnishings.
“We like those conversational pieces – something people can really take pride in having,” Gregory said.
More than showcasing their art, Bonner and Gregory wanted to show kids what you can do when you follow your passion.
“If we can present something to show kids our artistry and what you can do,” then it opens doors in their minds to what they can do, Gregory said.
“It’s just an idea we had that grew to fruition, and it’s a kind of ‘grow your own’ concept,” Gregory said. “Especially at times like this, a lot of small businesses are hurting, and we definitely like to let people know we’re here… Art is one of those things that really brings people together. I’ve had people drive all the way from Baton Rouge to check out my work… Even though it’s a competition, you can still show the unity.”
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That unity was forged out of a friendship that began eight years ago.
Bonner owned a clothing store nearly eight years ago, “and Quin would make things for my shop, like candleholders,” he said.
They’ve been friends ever since. Their bond has deepened through a shared passion for building that came later in life and is largely self-taught.
Bonner, 31, started three years ago. Gregory, now 35, was 27 when his woodworking journey began.
Bonner was working in a plant doing scaffolding after graduating from Ozen High School. It was the kind of job that seemed to better his life and his family’s lives.
“I was less fortunate growing up, and I’d see other people’s homes and think, ‘I’d like to have that,’” he said. “I started picking up stuff other people would toss out and fixing it up. I love working with my hands, always did.”
One day, after refinishing a discarded roadside find, his wife remarked, “That’s really good.”
“It just went from there,” Bonner said.
Gregory pursued a degree in accounting at LIT after graduating from Westwood High School in Austin.
He worked at a chemical lab for nearly eight years, “and when we’d get shipments in, they’d come in on a pallet. After we put everything up, I’d take the pallet home and was like, ‘I can try to build something.’ ”
He started off building dog beds, and it took off from there.
In 2014, he started building pallet-born custom furniture and laundry organizers and put his skills to work full-time as the owner and CEO of Uptown Studios, which encompasses his custom furniture work, candle making and barber shop.
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“This (show) is the first time I’ve done anything this big since 2014,” Gregory said, noting he’d only been in the barbering business two years before opening his own shop.
But different dreams come at different paces.
“I started late, but I feel like it’s perfect timing. The growth is coming when it’s supposed to,” he said.
Gregory said people are drawn to those who display confidence “in your walk and your talk and the way you work.”
Bonner said he loves seeing the expression on people’s faces when they get their pieces, adding his work is also therapeutic.
Well into their respective woodworking journeys, each has built a clientele that’s growing in the custom furniture niche.
“We have different things that we specialize in,” Gregory said.
Bonner said he wants to show people “you can do what you love and you can work side by side (with a competitor) and both be successful.”
That’s a message the pair hope will resonate with other local artists and craftsmen.
“Nobody in any other industry has done a ‘versus’ in Southeast Texas,” Gregory said.
Gregory also said “it might lead to a versus in barbering” or any other creative endeavor that ultimately shares “the mindset of making a difference in the community.”
“We’re opening the door to pressure people to want to make a move and get them to spark into wanting to work with one another,” he said.
Gregory points to last summer’s mural fest as an example of what can be done to better the community and expose youth to creative, passion-driven life paths.
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“From the standpoint of downtown, people think about the riverfront or downtown renovations, but the mural fest was really the first jump toward beautifying downtown,” he said.
Bonner said he and Gregory are trying to get kids to see they can be creative in whichever project they undertake.
“Anything you can visualize, you can work into woodwork,” he said. “I don’t call myself a carpenter. It’s not even a job – it’s a love, a passion… It’s definitely for the kids. This is definitely bigger than just us on an event flyer. Change one person, and that could change somebody else. It’s the domino effect.”
The two gathered at Pour09 for an after-show celebration on Friday night. A people’s choice vote opening night cast Bonner the winner of the “versus.”
Gregory posted a photo of the two with a message saying, “Before I lay my head to rest, I want to congratulate my bro Joe Bonner for winning Versus: Quin Gregory and Joe Bonner. You put in the work and dropped some classics Fam!”
In the end, the show was a win-win for both Gregory and Bonner, and those of whom they hope to inspire.
“Two brothers with a dream,” Gregory said. “What once was a dream has become history.”
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Kim Brent is a photojournalist with The Beaumont Enterprise.
She came to Beaumont in September 2014 amid a search for full-time positions after her previous paper in Michigan reduced many staff members, Kim included, to part time.
“I managed to eke out a living by getting a second job in my off time working at the deli counter of a local grocery store,” she said. “And let me just say, slicing meat for hours on end is no fun for a vegetarian.”
When she’s not out covering our community, she loves to paint, knit, read, write and love and be loved by my two kitties, Memphis and Skeets.
“And yes, I also like to take pictures for the pure joy and creativity of it.”
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