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KinForged

A new YouTube docuseries by John and Keely Shofner profiles makers from a variety of disciplines.

By Jon Spayde
June 05, 2025

Digital Only

Video + Audio

Free To Read

Photo courtesy of John and Keely Shofner

Ceramist Forrest Lesch-Middleton

KinForged, a new YouTube docuseries about craft artists, was born in 2024, when John Shofner had honey on his mind.

“I wanted to make a film about honey makers, and my wife, Keely, told me that there was this honey guy down the road,” John says.

It wasn’t the most obvious goal for the videographer, who had built a career shooting promotional spots for racing teams and race car drivers seeking sponsorships. But he had recently married motorsport marketer Keely Aguilar—the pair met on one of those marketing jobs—and moved from Dallas to Sonoma County, California, where Keely has lived all her life. “I wanted to meet people, learn the area,” John says. “There were so many craftspeople here, I figured I could start with them.”

While that honey maker turned down John’s overture, it wasn’t long before the couple was turning John’s impulse into a project. They contacted six Sonoma craft artists—a bicycle maker, a woodworker, a ceramist, a metalsmith, a glass artist, and a chocolatier—and launched KinForged.

Three films, averaging between 15 and 20 minutes in length, have been uploaded so far: a portrait of John Fitzgerald, who builds bicycles from scratch, and profiles of woodworker Jim McVicar and ceramist Forrest Lesch-Middleton.

Photo courtesy of John and Keely Shofner

John Fitzgerald builds bicycles from scratch

“I wanted to meet people, learn the area. There were so many craftspeople here, I figured I could start with them.”

— John Shofner

In all of these mini-documentaries, John says, “The person is primary, the craft secondary.” To that end, his subjects reflect at leisure on their goals and values, and he includes interviews with friends and associates that tease out what makes these subjects special.

That said, there is plenty of attention paid to the process: close-ups of Fitzgerald welding and polishing; McVicar selecting and planing fine woods before finishing his one-of-a-kind cutting boards and furniture. “It’s important to me,” says Keely, “to provide insight into how long it takes to make something, the skill it takes, the years of study—and why the object costs what it costs.”

The filmmakers also make sure to get out of the workshop. In the Fitzgerald portrait, for instance, they show the subject and friends rolling through lush wine country landscape on their bikes. And they travel with McVicar to a demonstration he does for a high school shop class.

The Shofners have begun contacting artists, including one in Arizona, for their second set of six videos. They still pay the bills with motorsports, but now their work on the racing circuit is helping them expand the reach of KinForged. “We’re working with an international racing team this season,” John says. “We’ll be in Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, the UK, and Portugal—and on the lookout for makers there.”

Jon Spayde is a contributing editor to American Craft.

Photo courtesy of John and Keely Shofner

Woodworker Jim McVicar

Visit KinForged online.

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