The Furniture Should Outlive the Tree: Philip Hussey of Thos. Moser

Lisa Belisle: Hello, I'm Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to or watching Radio Maine, our video podcast where we explore and celebrate creativity and the human spirit. We are sponsored by the Portland Art Gallery of Portland, Maine. And you can have many connections to the Portland Art Gallery might have been listening to Radio Maine all these years. We now have Off the Wall, which is our online magazine. We also have a lot of really wonderful people that we're connected to in the community. And today we're talking with Philip Hussey. He is the CEO of Thos. Moser, which is a very well-known Maine company. And also you have connections to another very well-known Maine company. So thanks for coming in today.

Philip Hussey: Thanks for having me.

Lisa Belisle: Delighted

Philip Hussey: To be here.

Lisa Belisle: It's really great to talk to someone who, you said 17 generations?

Philip Hussey: Seven generations.

Lisa Belisle: Seven generations. Okay. I was trying to figure out the 17 because I was like, have we been in this country that long?

Philip Hussey: No, no. Yeah, just seven.

Lisa Belisle: Seven generations with Hussey Seating. That's your legacy company. It's not where you currently work.

Philip Hussey: Correct.

Lisa Belisle: Somehow you ended up enjoying working with family type businesses enough that you then became involved with the company that you're part of.

Philip Hussey: Correct. Yep.

Lisa Belisle: And you went away and came back. You were raised in Maine, you left, you decided I like Maine. I won't be here again. So many things I think to talk about here. But today let's start with why Thomas Moser?

Philip Hussey: That's the easiest question of all. I guess first, thank you very much for having me. Sort of thrilled to be here and particularly as I've learned more about furniture and getting to know Tom before he passed, the intersection of furniture and art is something that I didn't know anything about and have rapidly been coming up to speed at on and really appreciate the overlap of design and function and that's been cool to learn. So I'm honored to be on my first art podcast is cool. But why Thomas Moser? I feel just wildly fortunate to have landed at the company that I did because of the sort of history and what it means to sort of I think mostly the Maine community. It's really an international brand with national presence, but rooted in something that everybody here knows so well and that's sort of main people and that's the core makers or the core of who we are. And so to be able to have the honor to lead the next generation of that is something that I'm really excited about 18 months in, but I'm excited about it.

Lisa Belisle: When I think about sort of the intergenerational aspect of family businesses, I mean, there's two paths. Either the company succeeds and it keeps moving forward or it doesn't succeed and it stops. And if it moves forward, you can either keep it within the family or it goes somewhere else. And you've described sort of this going somewhere else that Thomas Moser did, but in a really unique way. So talk to me about that.

Philip Hussey: Sure. And I'll quote, my dad who passed away about a decade ago, used to talk about family business as a blessing and a curse. And it's an incredibly powerful thing to be in a family business because you have the ability, I think, to care more and for longer than what I'll say are traditional sort of traditional businesses. And particularly in like multi-generational businesses, I think after the third generation, there are studies that effectively say your job becomes not to mess it up of just get it to the next generation. So I think there's something particularly unique about the family, sort of family business. The sort of backstory of how I landed at Thomas Moser is really a sort of collision of family businesses in the state of Maine. And as the Mosers were sort of looking for what that permanent home looked like for their business and for what Tom and his wife Mary had built, I would say that the business could easily be called Thomas and Mary Moser because Mary was as instrumental building the business as Tom was. Her name just isn't on the sign and they're better to ask than I am, but they wanted something that would preserve and protect not only the brand but the people and having a group rooted in Maine was important to them. And so this other business, our parent company is called Chenmark and we were founded a little over a decade ago by a husband and wife coupled, James and Trish Higgins and James' Brother Palmer. And they founded the group with the idea that there are a number of family businesses out there that don't have a succession plan, but don't want to sell to traditional investors or private equity or a competitor, but want to preserve that integrity of the history of those companies. And so over the last 10 plus years, we've been partnering with family businesses to provide that permanent home and we're lucky that sort of Moser's now one of them.

Lisa Belisle: I remember talking with ... So David Moser is one of the ... He's a represented artist with Portland Art Gallery. And so we've interviewed him before. He's actually somebody that my husband and I know somewhat better than some of the other artists. And I remember this kind of transitional time where the family was trying to figure out what was going to happen. It was before their father had passed away and it seemed like they really had to ... It was a lot to grapple with. There's a lot of emotions involved. So I think two things. One, it's fantastic that your family's company has continued and you're the seventh generation, even though you're not working with them, but also that there was a path forward for Thomas Moser that didn't involve the company as I think you might have referred to it, sold for parts. So one of the things that I wonder about is in companies where it's a family owned business and the person that founded it has this very deep emotional connection, but the people that by the third generation is just like, " Don't screw it up, but they're not deeply connected. "What are some of the challenges that arise as far as decision making?

Philip Hussey: Good question. I guess I'll sort of reframe the sort of don't mess it up sort of mentality more so if you want to speaking in sort of my personal family's business, Hussey Seating Company, you start to develop a sense of stewardship that your job is to make sure to get it to the next generation. And I think a lot of Tom felt that as well and not necessarily the next generation of Moser', but just making sure that these businesses have sort of a next generation that's going to steward the brand and have a place to call it home. Tom was always, I was lucky enough to meet him a handful of times and work with him as we work through the transition and he would always say," I'm not Thomas Moser, you are, "to all the craftsmen in that what he built was actually based on being able to be a teacher and a teacher of the craft that is the beautiful furniture we make and he instilled this idea within everybody of what they're putting out in the world is going to last forever. One line that I've come to really know and appreciate is he would tell people the furniture should last longer than the life of the tree that it came from. And so if you think about how we're cutting down when our partners, it's another family business in New Hampshire actually that we procure our wood from, cuts wood down anywhere from 80 to 120 years old. Tom designed and then subsequently taught the craftsmen at the business that the furniture and the joinery should last at least that long. And so as he's sort of instilling those values into the craftsmen at Thos Moser, they are then teaching the next generation. And we've had people who've been there 40 years and who are now mentoring folks who just started two years ago and Tom's sort of belief was that that is the spirit of Thos Moser not tied to sort of an individual or a man.

Lisa Belisle: Well, I'm really glad you clarified that because this is something that I think more people are tapping into now is this idea that, yeah, there can be longevity to a product. I mean, for so long, we've probably relied on the fact that mass manufacturing could give us, you could have a row of chairs and there's nothing wrong with having a row of chairs. I mean, Hussey seating obviously. However, good quality is really important because no matter what you're building, whether it's a chair that came from wood or whether it's seeding that came from metal, let's just say you don't want to be starting from scratch every year you want to have something that isn't going to end up in the landfill that people are going to use and want to have in their home or business.

Philip Hussey: Correct.

Lisa Belisle: So I think we need to kind of really continue to move towards that longevity of product and care in the work.

Philip Hussey: It's a great point. I give Tom a ton of credit because he was doing sustainability before it was cool and before it had a capital S and not because it was sexy or because it grabbed attention on marketing channels, but because it was the right thing to do. And so there's a couple of elements of the sustainability component that we think about at Moser. One is just the first and foremost, it's our designs that they are designed to be timeles. And so the idea is that if you buy something and you plan to give it to your kids or your grandchildren, the design needs to be relevant in perpetuity and not having to throw it out, recycle it, whatever makes that incredibly powerful. The second piece is what I just talked about, just the idea that it can last longer than the life of the tree that it came from is pretty cool when you think about giving that tree a second life. And the last piece on this is just hardwood is inherently a sustainable sort of resource. It's actually growing faster than it's being consumed, which is a very interesting fact, specifically North American hardwoods. So what we primarily work with is cherry and walnut. The cherry comes from the Allegheny plateau, so Pennsylvania and New York and then the walnut comes from the banks of the Missouri River. And so these mostly are small family held lots, less than 50 acres select cut. And so if there's not clear cutting, not mass cutting, and the forests are growing faster than folks are cutting them down, which is amazing. Then you pair that with the idea that hardwood furniture continues to store carbon for its life and it's a wildly sustainable solution in the furniture world and especially compared to any plastic solution or these particle board or laminate hardwood is something that really does last forever.

Lisa Belisle: It's great to hear this because I think the other thing as a physician for many years that I've had concerns about is the health impact of things like laminate, particle board, carpet. There's so many things that we bring into our homes that are off gassing and they'll off gas for a very long time or they'll contribute to the body burden. So you're describing like we're bringing wood into a home and it's probably at its very foundation healthier than some of the other things that we have been bringing into our homes for a long time. So we're kind of getting back to what we used to be doing a very long time ago, which is make sure that the things that we have in our houses are safe for our kids.

Philip Hussey: Absolutely. Yeah. Whether it's a table or a chair or a bed or a case piece, the idea that it's natural I think it's hard to explain, but when you live with it, you develop an emotional connection to it. Not only that it's just healthier because it's not plastic, but it makes you feel better in the way knowing sort of where it came from and that it was tied to the earth and to the ground and that it'll be around forever, particularly using like a dining table example is a great one. We have a lot of folks who their first addition or they'll start a collection with us by adding a dining table and you have the story of the wood, which is incredibly powerful, just where it came from, how it ended up in our shop. Then you have the story of the maker because as you know, each piece of Thos Moser Furniture is signed by the craftsman or the craftswoman who made it. So then you have this story of a single person made this for me, the customer. And then as you gather your family around this table, you think there's probably going to be multiple generations in your family who gather around this table. And really, it brings everybody together in a way that is incredibly real and powerful.

Lisa Belisle: Yeah. I mean, as you're saying this, I'm remembering a table that a former attorney but friend of our family, Bob Newton, who used to, his wife was an artist and that's one of the reasons I knew him, but I also knew him because he was a Yarmouth guy. He made this table, he made it for my parents. I think it was impacted by a fire that my parents have, but then somehow it was revitalized. It's now gone to the next generation. Somebody else in the family has the table. So there's like a story that is attached to this. So it's not just the thing that's in front of you right at the moment, but it does carry forward the story of the person who made it also the fire that it survived or whatever the thing is.

Philip Hussey: It's not just utilitarian, right?

Lisa Belisle: Exactly.

Philip Hussey: There's meaning behind it.

Lisa Belisle: Yeah. The gathering place sort of idea. Yeah. So I'm wondering, switching gears a little bit, one of the things that I read about you is so you raised in Maine, you went to Colby College, you left, you came back. So all of these things obviously impacted you, but one of the things that really impacted you was that your father's life was not as long as many people have the benefit of. So I'm wondering if you wouldn't mind talking to me a little bit about that because I had my father for many more decades probably than you had yours, and yet the loss of him for our family, it's profound. It's so hard to lose a parent, especially one that you're close to. So talk to me about how that shaped you.

Philip Hussey: Yeah. So my dad passed away in 2016, so we're coming up on 10 years this June, next month and he was 59 years old. So he led our family business for 20 some odd years, the Hussey Seating Company and did that in an amazing way, but also was an incredible dad, very present, very engaged, very supportive. And when he was diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer, mucosal melanoma, so it's a melanoma that's actually inside that manifests his tumors, not a traditional skin cancer. It was about two and a half years later that he passed away after being diagnosed. And when he received the diagnosis, instead of sort of wallowing in despair, faced a head on, which was incredibly powerful to be a part of in that he shared his entire experience with his business, with the community, with friends, wrote a blog that ended up having thousands of followers, just journaling what it's like living and working and traveling and having fun and loving with cancer. And while he sort of eventually passed away, he did so in a way that was incredibly graceful and made all of us, I think, reflect a lot on what it means to be alive in a way that when he died, I felt incredibly happy that I got to know him. And although I will miss him for the rest of my life, I feel so lucky and fortunate that I had the time I did with him and he showed that just by enjoying life every single day. And so as I think about going forward and now I have two kids, I have a two and a half year old and a five month old, almost six month old, recognizing that there is no end game, like this is it. And being able to, I mean, it's said all the time, but just enjoy time writ large and make sure that the things we choose to do are meaningful and worthwhile is what I learned from my dad the last two and a half years of his life and he never once complained. It wasn't what was me, why me? It was, "I don't know how long I'm going to be here, so might as well make it a worthwhile experience." And that's an approach and a mentality that I try to live with every day and yeah, I feel incredibly lucky as odd as it sounds to have had that sort of experience.

Lisa Belisle: Do you think it also impacts your interest in continuing to maintain family connections? I mean, you and I both grew up in Maine. I don't know how large your extended family is. My extended family is pretty large when you go through a trauma like a family member's cancer diagnosis, because our family also did, it can have the potential for creating rifts, but also it can really bring people together. Do you think that, and in our case, I just want to be clear, it brought us together, or our family's also very grateful for the time that we had with my father, but it also kind of changes my perspective on living in Maine, making sure that I'm trying to connect with my family members, trying to connect with my community. Do you think that that happened in your family?

Philip Hussey: My dad, in addition to leading the business, I'd say he was a civic leader in Maine as well and watching the community around him support him even more during his diagnosis was incredibly powerful and watching his family support him was powerful. And this idea of community and relationships I think was underscored during that period and very clear and something I aspire to, honestly, to be able to have sort of those level of deep connections with so many people, more and more folks would come out of the woodwork and I was always blown away. It's how can you have such deep relationships with so many people was pretty special to see and he was just authentically himself and vulnerable and open and generous with his time in all senses with folks. And that's just an incredible example to try and follow.

Lisa Belisle: So one of the things that you alluded to was this idea of design and the sort of the potentially impermanent nature of design, maybe there's a better way to put it, and also the relationship between art and design. And when I spoke with David Moser a few years ago, and I think I also interviewed maybe his brother, I think people don't always think, "Well, I'm designing a chair or a table or some other piece that's going to go in the home." They don't always think about that as an artistic pursuit and they don't always think about craft as similarly creative and artistic, but you brought it into the conversation earlier. I think it truly is in a different way than this piece by Ann Sklar from the Portland Art Gallery, that's clearly art sitting on a wall, but what you're describing is this is living art and the process of designing this living art for Thos Moser is equally valid and important.

Philip Hussey: Absolutely.

Lisa Belisle: Do you think that people have that same framing or you said you came to it yourself after some changes in understanding?

Philip Hussey: How you look at things changes, right? When you spend every day inside a workshop looking at how pieces are formed, how they're shaped, how they're sanded, how they're oiled, is incredibly eye-opening and so that you almost can't look at it in another way right after you're there every day and just experiencing it, even the smells and the sounds. To give you a sense of like what art can be in the furniture world using an example from sound is we train and teach craftsmen and myself included as much I'm halfway through building a chair. So I'm decidedly not a craftsman, hopefully one day we'll finish, but when we're putting a wedge in any of our stools, you hammer in the wedge with a mallet and it expands the joint and there are two different sounds and so it's essentially like a clink, clink, clink thud. When you hear the thud, don't hammer again or you may split the leg of that stool or that chair and that's something that one, you'll learn by actually splitting the leg, hitting it a second time, but it's not just an exact measurement, it's you're using sort of all your senses to create and that's a special form of art by itself. I think the other specific piece that's powerful to our pieces is this idea that everything should be useful or have a function and not overly ornate or excessive. And that was core of how Tom started originally Shaker inspired and David's influence has provided been incredibly powerful for the business as well and you can tell the differences between Tom and David's design and they are both unique and special in their own right, but all of the joinery is earned and it's useful and then highlighted and there's not sort of pieces put in just because it looks nice, it all serves a purpose and that purpose sort of tying that back to the art, making sure that people can see that purpose is cool and that's the sort of the art of it is highlighting the purpose of our joinery.

Lisa Belisle: This is such a fascinating conversation for me because I've talked to a lot of artists. I've been so fortunate over the years and there's sort of the medium that they work in, which is very important and usually it's a very specific reason why they ended up ... Some people are multimedia and that's one approach, but some people are very specifically encaustic, let's just say. Or even when they go as a painter, there's very specifically acrylics, but it's a choice that they made similar to this specific wood with this specific joinery. So there's the materials, but then there's also the process. So for people who are artists, craftsmen, designers, the process that they go through is equally important to the medium that they use. And that's what I'm hearing from you right now is that the process of design but also the process of creation, those lend so much to the final product.

Philip Hussey: Absolutely. And I'll give you a real life example in that. And obviously we have schedule boards and we have to meet customer timelines, but generally speaking, we don't mandate what an individual maker builds. It goes up on a board and they get to opt in to what they want to make. We have a team that works on chairs, we have a team that works on case pieces and a team that works on tables, but in any given week you may be interested in building these type of chairs or this type of stool and as long as everything gets done in that week to make sure we meet the promises we've made to our customers, then we want people to opt in and actively select what they're going to build so that sense of ownership and pride is real and not sort of a top down mandate and that what that sort of results in is people being excited about what they're sort of compiling and making and designing and that you see it in the results of the end product.

Lisa Belisle: Again, I'm so enjoying this conversation because I think about the profession that I came from and the people that I've worked with who are clinicians who have that same level of engagement and passion and really want to continue to look at medicine as an art and a craft, but have some agency as to how they can approach it versus the people that are managed in a really top down way. And I think both approaches have an eventual outcome and sometimes one outcome is more necessary than the others and obviously the bottom line is an outcome that both approaches need to take into consideration, but you're right that this sort of pride in what we have done is going to probably emerge more if you have made that choice. I'm going to build this chair today in this very specific way. And I want it to come out well because I want to give it to the person who's ordered it. I want them to feel really attached to it. I want them to feel that this is something that I've put a lot of myself into.

Philip Hussey: I always encourage our team after a piece of furniture has been delivered to call the customer and ask them to flip it over and see who made it and then send us a picture back of that furniture, of that piece where it's sitting or living in their home and then we go find the maker and say, "Hey, this is the final piece. Here's the chair, here's the table, here's where it's like we'll call home for the next several decades." And it brings so much joy to the maker to be able to see that piece living out in the outside world, wherever that may be. I think the other piece one of the hardest or most challenging steps in building a piece of furniture and one of the most that I described like art is board matching and board picking. And so we get pallets and pallets of lumber delivered to our workshop and it starts with the team in our rough mill who are flipping boards looking for the perfect piece or pieces I should say to put together because there's a lot of variance in color and grain patterns even in the same species. So you'll get different color walnut, even though it's all walnut and most companies, most big furniture companies are just saying, "Hey, let's pick the boards off the top of the pile. If we have to stain it, if we have to do sort of aggressive tone matching, doesn't matter. Let's pick the boards that are the right size, drop them, rip them, glue up the panel, send it on its way." We actively don't do that. Our team will spend hours picking boards to make sure that when it arrives on its piece and its sort of final resting place that they match. And I'll give you an example, one of our most iconic pieces designed early on is our Dr. White's chest. It has several drawers and then sort of two cabinets and we have people use them for in their kitchens or a wardrobe. Originally it was designed in honor of a doctor who there's a secret compartment in it and allegedly he would hide some type of medicine inside the secret compartment, but the drawers as they're going down, they match. So you have to be able to, the team in our rough mill, Jim Fickett leads our rough mill, he's been there almost 40 years, he has to be able to visualize what that's going to look like when it's in raw lumber form and that's amazing. On that piece alone, I think they spend maybe two days just picking the boards for it, which is absolutely mind blowing when you see them just going through stack after stack and flipping and inspecting and then visualizing, stepping back and then you get to the end of the shop when you see it after it's finished and it is one of the most beautiful pieces you've ever seen because it all flows together in a grain pattern that is consistent and when you can understand where it started, it's truly remarkable.

Lisa Belisle: I continue to pick up on the use of the word maker. Because these are people who are actually making something. And I know this is a word that is more commonly been accepted into the cultural parlance, particularly when it comes to Maine. Maine makers. We hear a lot about Maine makers, but the opposite side of that is more like factory workers. And Maine does have a lot of people who have and continue to work in factories. Do you think that that shift between maker and worker, do you think that that has an impact on people and the way that they approach their occupations?

Philip Hussey: That would be my guess. We're in Auburn. I can speak to what we do in Auburn. I've never worked in a paper mill or one of the P&G facilities or anything like that, so I can't speak to that side of it. I can say that recognizing everybody as sort of an equal team member is incredibly important because everybody plays a part in putting our beautiful pieces out into the world. This comes to fruition and I'll use an example. We don't have a quality department. So there's not one person on our team of a hundred plus people responsible for quality. It's everybody. And any point in the process, somebody can sort of put their hand up, including our team, putting that piece on the truck saying, "Hey, this isn't something we're comfortable sending out into the world." And that type of trust and empowerment is something that is cultural and not something that you can assign a job to. And so I think that speaks to this idea of a maker community is that we're all sort of responsible for it, not a worker per se, where you have functional expertise or authority over some task. We're not in the task, decidedly not in the task business.

Lisa Belisle: It's really not to say that people who work in factories can't have a pride in the work that they do. It's just a difference in the words and also in what you're trying to have your output be versus what somebody who works at say a paper mill is trying to have their output be. But I love that these things can coexist within Maine. I mean, Maine manufacturing has a very long and storied business from a hundred person organizations, two person organizations, all the way up to organizations that my great-great-grandparents worked in textile mills in Biddeford. Of course,

Philip Hussey: Yeah.

Lisa Belisle: I mean, I think anybody who's lived in Maine probably has that type of connection.

Philip Hussey: And I think the objectives are different. Again, I've never worked in a paper mill, but I can imagine if you're trying to produce at the volume that those companies have to produce and that the sort of world needs them to produce at, you have to have different systems. And to me, it's not necessarily a comment on the culture. It's just more a comment on the different end products. And what we're fortunate enough to be able to be creating and stewarding is this idea of individual ownership that doesn't always work when you're trying to mass produce something, but you can still have sort of incredible cultures of ownership and pride in what you're making, even if it's more of a traditional sort of assembly line approach.

Lisa Belisle: So I'm wondering if when you went to Colby College or even like backing up, I mean, because you've lived in Boston, you've lived in Washington, you've been all over the world, did you have a sense that you were going to end up back in Maine as the CEO of one of Maine's sort of iconic companies?

Philip Hussey: I don't think I had a sense. It was always a dream to be able to lead a team of people and particularly at something as iconic as Thos Moser I feel incredibly fortunate about. I also am incredibly grateful for the time I spent outside of Maine and I think you can go all over the world and I'm sure you know this, but there's no place in the world like Maine and that's just incredibly clear and can't imagine calling anywhere else home.

Lisa Belisle: So now that you have children of your own, is there anything that you're doing to help them understand this or just living your life?

Philip Hussey: Yeah, one's two and a half and one's five months. So we play a lot of trains, a lot of tag outside in the yard. I'd say something that's always top of mind is just trying to remember to be present. You hear it all the time from folks. It goes quickly. I can see that being true. We're two and a half years into our first son, Harry, and you can already see it going quickly. So trying to have a constant reminder to enjoy the time and enjoy what we're doing now because it is fleeting.

Lisa Belisle: Well, the other thing that really strikes me is to have something that you wake up and go to every day outside of your home. Obviously spending time with your children is really important and being present, but to be really connected with the work that you do, no matter where it is, but in your case, you happen to be the CEO of Thomas Moser. So when you're not with your kids, really enjoying what you're doing, really wanting to be there and kind of committing to that sort of life as it's sort of a role modeling of how to approach things. And so I guess, I mean, obviously it's not like your kids know, right? If you're five months old, you're like, "Hey, dad, you see me like your job's making you happy." But that specific choice to come back to Maine and to engage in a work that is fulfilling, it seems like that would also contribute towards your kids' eventual understanding of this connection.

Philip Hussey: I hope so. It's a good question. I haven't put a ton of thought into it, honestly, but feel very fortunate that I get in the car every day and I'm excited about showing up in Auburn or we have showrooms in Freeport, we have one in Boston, we have one in Washington DC, we have one in San Francisco and we regularly work with architects all over the country and anytime that I am lucky enough to be out on the road talking to people about the work we're doing, I pinch myself because it's an incredible brand to be representing and incredible team and yeah, I love it.

Lisa Belisle: Well, I know you're a busy guy with, you got the small children, you got this busy family, it's growing. And so I have to say, I feel honored that you've taken the time to have this conversation with me today and to kind of go deep in some of these areas that I think not everybody has a chance to have conversations about. So I appreciate your being here today.

Philip Hussey: Thank you for having me. I'll tell you your view out here looking at Chebeague is one of, this is one of my favorite views in Casco Bay. I grew up sailing in Casco Bay and so to be able to come back down onto Littlejohn and look out over the ocean this morning is pretty cool. I spent a bunch of time sailing with my dad actually up and down here. We'd keep our boat on the foresight in Portland growing up. It was actually my grandfather's boat originally and we'd sail every winter back up to South Freeport. So we'd do this passage several times a year.

Lisa Belisle: I do love that connection and I absolutely agree having grown up in Yarmouth, but not on Littlejohn. My connection to Littlejohn started many years before I got here and you're right, it's a pretty special place.

Philip Hussey: It's Incredible. Yeah.

Lisa Belisle: Yeah. So I'm really glad that you and I were able to meet each other here in this special place looking out over the special place that you once had with your dad. That's wonderful.

Philip Hussey: Thanks for having me.

Lisa Belisle: Yes. I'm Dr. Lisa Belisle. You've been listening to or watching Radio Maine, our video podcast where we explore and celebrate creativity in the human spirit actually with a connection to Maine. And we are sponsored by the Portland Art Gallery in Portland, Maine. I hope that we're going to be able to convince today's guest, this is Philip Hussey, who is the CEO of Thos Moser, to come to one of our Portland art gallery openings, see some of our David Moser sculptures, bring your kids. We have kids there. They love the art.

Philip Hussey: We're in.

Lisa Belisle: Yeah, that sounds fantastic because I think in talking to you, I feel very invigorated with the passion that clearly you bring to your work and you've brought to this conversation and I love that you're there working with the people of Thos Moser to kind of continue to bring this company into the future. So thanks again.

Philip Hussey: Thank you. And we actually, I should mention, we have an art opening coming up in Freeport. We're partnering with Maine Boats, Homes and Harbor and I'll have to get you the dates so you can share in beginning of June and do an art opening with, I'm sure you know Eric Hopkins from North Haven. He's one of our featured artists, but regularly we love highlighting Maine artists in Freeport.

Lisa Belisle: Well, that's fantastic. And Eric Hopkins also works with the Portland Art Gallery. So again-

Philip Hussey: We know he does. Yeah. Yeah. We've got Maine connections all around. So whether we see you there, whether we see you at the Portland Art Gallery, we'll see you again, no doubt. Thank you very much.