Instead of discussing a project, I would like to talk about my wonderful experiences at the Arrowmont School of Art in Tennessee. It was my first formal woodturning course in the USA and the course leader was Jack Slentz who is best known for his interesting texturing of turned pieces. Some of his work is shown below. The course was titled “Using the Lathe to make Sculpture”
There were 120 students who attended Arrowmont for the week. Some were doing clay, Fiber, Metal, mixed media, paper, stone, surface design and 12 were doing woodturning. The woodturning studio is excellent and is pictured on the left.
There are lathes from all the major manufacturers and when you arrive you select the lathe you want to work on for the week. I selected the John Jordan Stubby lathe as I had never turned on one of those before. We had turners for all over the USA. Russ drove all the way from California on his Harley-Davidson.
Most days would start with some time in the excellent library at the school, gathering ideas for the day. Then Jack would do a demonstration of one of his texturing techniques, then it was up to the students to do their thing.
The picture on the right shows some of the items the students created during the week. The course was fairly unstructured so it gave each student the opportunity to explore his/her creative mind. What was particularly good was that Jack has an irreverent attitude towards beautiful wood and explores wood purely as a canvas on which to create his own works of art. This allowed the students to really unlock some of the creative door in their minds.
On the left is the first piece I turned called “The Matador” It was hollow turned and then matted with masking tape and sand blasted to create a torso texture on one side. The bulls horns were added to depict the victory of the bull.
Having access to a sandblaster for the first time in my life was fun, so my next creation was “The Seed Pod”. This was turned and painted with Indian ink and acrylic paints.
I then went crazy with the Bosch carving tools in the studio and carved and drilled this piece, which then got very heavily sand blasted. It was fun, but not too sure if I will be doing much more of that.
After a tour to the resident pottery student studio I got the idea for another piece which is a classic potters shape with a very interesting tick carved pattern.
My thanks go to Russ for making the week so entertaining and the beers to celebrate on the last day.
My thanks go to Brooke for her friendship and showing me how to do multi axis turning.
My thanks go to Mark for being there whenever anyone need help.
My thanks go to Jack pictured in front of Brooke for his guidance through the week.
I certainly hope to be back at Arrowmont next year as it was a good learning experience.