My Turn

I used to write: poetry, fiction, essays. I had a talent for it, though words never felt easy to me. Nigh on twelve or thirteen years ago, I stopped. Grief silenced me. Editing mediocre writing for pay further numbed my love of language. I also quit talking about myself. Though some of my previous published writing had been quite self-revelatory, I became fanatically private.

Meeting me in person, you probably wouldn’t know any of this. Though I’ve always been shy, I’m quick, and I love to laugh and joke—when it come to puns, I verge on Tourette’s. So when I’m “on,” I can come across as jovial even. And over the years, I’ve learned to converse about the mundane. When I’m not focused on a task or goal, I can actually be friendly. I tend to ask a lot of questions, which keeps conversation flowing. I just reveal little about myself.

Of course, when I want to talk, when I want to connect with someone at a level deeper than the everyday, I revert to being painfully awkward and much too intense. So, mostly, I keep my silence.

My silence used to hurt. It doesn’t much anymore, one of the blessings of age—and art—for me. But breaking it does.

And writing, for me, is the most intense and painful form of breaking silence—so much so that even writing about the mundane is a test of perseverance. Simple emails? Ordeals.

So why the hell am I writing a blog?

Two and a half years ago, I applied to document this year’s International Turning Exchange, thus committing myself to this future task of writing on demand. I had warmed up the year before by creating my web site and writing most of the text that is still posted there. Then I wrote a couple of articles related to woodturning. A year and a half ago, I wrote a haiku. Last weekend, I wrote another seventeen syllables of poetry.

It’s time to begin to break my silence for good. My soul knows it, even if my mind still stamps and rears.

The 2007 International Turning Exchange residency program, organized by the Wood Turning Center in Philadelphia, is coming up fast. This program brings together four woodturning artists, a furniture maker, a scholar, and a photojournalist from across the globe to explore, create, and collaborate for eight exciting weeks. The lathe artists this year are Peter Oliver (New Zealand), Jean-François Delorme (France), Sean Ohrenich (USA), and Siegfried Schreiber (Germany), plus me. (Like many of the ITE photojournalists before me, I’ll be participating as both a photojournalist and a [fifth] lathe artist.) The furniture maker is Peter Harrison (USA). I’ll be posting profiles of my fellow fellows as my departure date (June 7) draws nearer.

This adventure will take me away from home for most of June, all of July, and into August! I’ll be documenting it all here (complete with photos), so you’ll be able to follow along as the adventure unfolds.

In the meantime, do check out the book Connections: International Turning Exchange 1995–2005 to see what happened during the first ten years of the program. You can also see a photo gallery of some of that work at the Wood Turning Center site. And don’t forget to check out last year’s program.

Well, now that I have my template set up, I guess it’s time to start writing.

I created this blog primarily to document the International Turning Exchange in Philadelphia (ITE) this summer, but since I’ve gone through the trouble to set it up, I’m going to use it also as a place to record thoughts about my work in general as a maker of turned wood art vessels.

I guess I’ll start at the obvious beginning point: who I am—namely, an erstwhile-writer-cum-editor-turned-professional-woodturner.

After many years of writing and editing and designing and laying out books, in October 2002, I was working as document production manager at an archaeological firm in Tucson. As such, I was responsible for editing and producing the firm’s technical reports and books and other materials. I liked the work, but the company was poorly managed, and I had been working there under unrelenting deadline pressure for seven long years. I had lobbied hard to change how things were done, but nothing had improved. By this point, I was angry all the time. My soul was screaming, and I had to make a change or die. I asked myself what I would rather do, and the answer that came to me was “turn wood.”

Now, I had never turned wood before. I loved wood and had collected a few fine vessels (thank you, Bob Rice!), but I had never turned—indeed, I’d never even seen a vessel turned. But I knew what a lathe was and the basic principle of turning, and I had a feeling.

I gave notice and left my job November 1. I couldn’t get into a woodturning class for two more months, but I got registered and I was ready. On January 10, 2003, I stood at a lathe for the first time and turned my first bowl, and I knew I’d found my calling.

I’ve been doing it full-time ever since.

The turning is a joy. The marketing is a challenge. I’m still learning how to make a living at this new career, and I’ll no doubt be writing about that challenge here. But I’m alive again. And from my hands now comes beauty.