When Eddie Wilkin looks at instruments, he sees them a little differently than most do.

A clarinet laying around that most probably see as a tool to make sound, he saw a lamp – and turned it into one.

A piano he found online for sale in Burlington, he decided needed to be turned into a desk.

And an old 45 record, having lost its appeal for music long ago, he decided needed new life as a bowl, which he gave to a friend.

The senior music major concentrating in piano is currently student teaching at Rutland High School. He’s the type of guy who can hear a song for the first time and almost immediately play it back on the piano, friends say.

 “Music is the pure essence of life, and life without music is nothing but silence.  I love giving someone else the gift of having the ability to listen to music, to get lost in a world full of auditory, and feel as if they have a safe house to be themselves,” Wilkin said smiling.

But while he loves playing music, he’s also handy and loves to fix things that break – which might explain his need to create furniture from instruments. 

Wilkin proudly displayed the clarinet lamp to friends, which now sits right next to his bed.

“Look, it works,” he said earlier this semester after he had finished it.

To make the piano, he removed the keys in a makeshift workshop U-haul van and made a few other alterations and now has functioning desk that he plans to sell to a friend.

The record bowl was born out of boredom, he said.

He was cleaning out his garage, found a bunch or records and there happened to be a fire in a fire pit outside of his apartment burning that day.

Using a makeshift tool to hold it above the fire, Wilkin dangled the record above the flames and waited for it to heat it up – not to the point of catching on fire, but to slowly melt it.

He squeezed in the sides before it was totally cooled and ended up with a bowl with a wavy top like expensive glass candy bowls.

“Here, have this,” he said to a fellow music major Rebecca Scelza who was standing next to him.

“I guess I didn’t realize he was super duper creative with stuff like this,” Scelza said.

Scelza said she’s using the bowl purely for decoration on her desk because with the hole in it it won’t hold anything. However, she does admire his talents.

“I think it’s great, the fact that he’s taking musical instruments and turning them into something you could use everyday,” Scelza said.