Bent Barn Studio
About the Business
Hi, I'm Aaron, and at the end of 2015 I quit my (then) 20+ year corporate career to follow my bliss; start building my own brand and create more of my own things.
Velda Embrey & Aaron Embrey, owners of Bent Barn Studio
My amazing Mom (and Bent Barn Studio partner), Velda Embrey, spent the first 20 years of her career in banking.
Then, she was a bookkeeper for a small, local business for another 20 years before they closed their doors in 2012.
I couldn’t be happier that Mom was willing to retire from her retirement to help me manage Bent Barn Studio.
Read more about the whole Bent Barn Team, here >>
Chapter 1
About the Name: BENT FOCUS
Once upon a time, in a life very far away, a MUCH younger version of myself made the decision to quit another comfortable, corporate job to start their own photography business…
Back then, it was called Bent Focus Photography.
I called it “BENT” because my path was winding (and not always clear) nor *ahem*focused, interestingly…
It was also BENT because I’ve always loved the inevitable imperfections in the things we imperfect humans create… BENT but not broken.
Bent Focus was my first real business, and I wanted it to be something really great…
Alas, it was a failed attempt at most everything.
Of course, I learned valuable lessons from that experience.
And of course, I grew and changed, and Bent Focus's “successes” and “failures”, lead me down this path to Bent Barn Studio...
Chapter 2
About the Name: BENT BARN
My Dad was in his seventies when he built a big, red barn in his suburban backyard. He had an idea to bring his rural roots to his suburban home. So, he envisioned it, designed it, and built it.
He organized his plans and took action to make it happen.
AND he also rested and asked for help when he needed it.
Mostly, he showed up and took persistent and consistent action in order to change his idea for a rustic suburban barn into real thing.
Over the last several years of his life he encouraged me to escape from the sticky corporate net (again and again).
My Dad thought I should face those fears of uncertainty and venture out on my own (again)…
He would ask me, “How could you possibly fail?”
Not long after my dad's passing in November 2015, I decided it was time to blaze a new trail for myself (again)…
And that first idea/seed for Bent Barn Studio was planted…
The Renovation Chapter 3:
Still Bent, 2022–2026
In July 2022, the art barn burned.
It began with an unattended flame (beeswax and ceremonial resins, of all things). Tools of sacred intention.
By the time it was over, the barn and nearly everything inside it were gone. Years of artwork. Supplies. Made things, and the makings of things. Not everything, though… A few journals survived, scorched at the edges. My grandmother’s Bible, charred but intact. They still sit out back on my mother’s screened-in porch, waiting for me to be ready for them, again… I’ve written about the fire elsewhere, at length, and the deeper story belongs there.
But this page is about a name, and the fire belongs in the name’s story for one reason: The barn burned, but the studio didn’t. Bent Barn kept working from my home in Longview, with mom keeping the books and the business steady, just as she had from the very beginning.
Client work continued—though it looked a bit different, and new work arrived, in-between sweaty hours of clean-up and trips to the dump.
The thing I’d built turned out not to live in a building at all. It lived in a way of working and a way of working doesn’t burn.
And here’s something I didn’t see coming. For years, I sort of felt the name never quite… fit… Bent Barn sounded rough-hewn, rugged, a little weathered (like dad’s old barn), and the work I was doing was becoming more and more refined, and more strategic. More exacting.
I’d been waiting for the name and the business to finally (somehow?) agree with each other. Then… Suddenly, the work changed, or rather, perhaps, I finally understood what the work had always been.
I spent thirty years focused on making smart, beautiful, interesting and informative visuals. Somewhere along the way, I learned that the real work happens long before the design tools open: seeing what’s true about who you are, and then naming it in language that FITS, and only then, beginning to build something that’s meant to last. See. Name. Build.
One day, rereading the chapter above that I wrote about my dad many moons ago, I finally saw it: “He envisioned it. He designed it. He built it.”
I’d been teaching my father’s barn-raising pattern for years without SEEING whose it was. The method was never mine alone. It was inherited, like the heartwood, old barn red that still runs through everything we build.
So no, the name never fit the business I started. The business grew into the name.
An old bent barn has never meant the opposite of craft. A barn is craft: joinery and heartwood, raised by hand and rooted in love, made to stand long after trends have fallen away. And being BENT never meant being damaged. Bentwood is a technique where the wood is shaped carefully, without breaking it, into incredible forms that straight lumber could never take. That’s how all of this started, back in my earliest Bent Focus days.
My work is still BENT, but not broken. Again. Still.
Welcome to the renovation.
— Aaron, 2026
Rooted in East Texas. Working everywhere.