My Turn

So many changes have happened over the last four months.

I’m comfortably installed in my new studio. And now I have a brand-new lathe for my new studio, a Jet 1642, with a 2-hp, 230-v, reversible motor and a 16″ swing. The speed is also variable from 0 to 3200 rpm, with two different belt settings, unlike my old lathe.

Don’t get me wrong. My old lathe, also a Jet, the 1442, served me well for almost five years of full-time turning—and I haven’t retired it yet. It is a little workhorse, but I have worked it hard and push its limitations daily. What are its limitations? Well, the speed is variable only at fixed steps. The lowest speed is theoretically 450 rpm, but actually measures closer to 700 rpm—not slow enough to safely turn very unbalanced pieces. It also lacks reverse. And though 1 hp does the job most of the time, I can stall the motor if I cut too agressively. It has been a very good machine for me for a long time, though, and I would stand by it as a solid choice for an inexpensive first full-size lathe.

My new lathe is, I think, the best deal around for the money. It costs little more than half the price of a comparable Powermatic (I paid $1439 on sale!), and it feels rock steady. I’m actually astonished at how quietly and smoothly it operates. I feel as though I can turn anything on it. And, although it may not be a lifetime lathe, I have no doubt I will get years of service from it.

I haven’t really settled back into turning since my return, because I am busy moving into a new studio. As wonderful as my current situation has been since I began turning, it’s time to make a change. I did enjoy the companionship of sharing a workshop with other turners this summer, and I’m going to try it for a while longer. A good friend who is also a turner has offered to share her studio, and I’m excited about the synergistic possibilities.

The timing of the move seems right. Moving is always a cleansing process, and coming off of this summer, the cleansing feels apropos. I’m beginning by sorting through my huge store of wood, determining what is worth moving and what to throw out. I shipped wood back from Philadelphia too, my beloved pear and some holly, and I’m eager to make the physical and mental space for it.

My work flow will be entirely different too, as it was in Philadelphia. It is a chance to reimagine and reorganize everything. My lathe has been against a wall, somewhat blocked in. Now it will be freestanding, with room to move around it, allowing me, I hope, to work more fluidly. And many of the tools I have will be more accessible because they will all be in one place.

I’ll keep you posted on how the reimagining goes, and maybe have some pictures next time.

I went hiking in the desert today for the first time in almost three months, and I finally feel like I made it back home.

The desert is as green as I’ve ever seen it, deeply so. The prickly pear are ripe. Fishhook barrel cactus are blooming. Creosote blossoms are turning to their woolly fruit. The whiptail lizards, even the spotted whiptails, are huge—12 inches and longer—and more numerous than I’ve ever seen. No bobcat or deer or javelina tracks along the trail, but in the underbrush, cottontails and chipmunks and round-tail ground squirrels and white-wing doves.

The summer monsoons must have been heavy. Not only is everything deeply green and lush, but half of one of our usual trails has been erased by a new flood, and other trails are overgrown. Sabino Canyon Creek is running strong. A fecund season. So much life to come home to.

A poem from before I left:

Ocotillo aflame

Blooms lick the sky.
Limbs stretch and sway,
lit,
longing.

Since I’ve been doing the blog, I often receive emails from strangers who are reading the blog but don’t feel comfortable making public comments. I received such an email today, and after I read it, I was idly looking at the sender’s name and noticed that the email address was from Hawaii. Hmm, I thought, didn’t I know a girl in junior high with the same name who had lived in Hawaii before and loved it? Could she have moved back to Hawaii later? No way, I thought. No, no possible way. I began to tremble. My mind was reeling.

I Googled her name. I couldn’t find a photo of her, but I found that she was of Scottish-Irish heritage, and that clicked. 

I composed a reply, thanking her for reading my blog, etc., and then asked if perhaps she might possibly have lived in Virginia as a teenager way back when. The answer came back in minutes: Oh man, Lynne!!!!!! I wondered what happened to you!!

We were thirteen years old, people. Thirty-seven—count them—years ago. I lived there for only five and a half months, and we didn’t even attend the same school. But, however briefly, we were close, and the memories stuck. We exchanged numbers and the phone rang and her voice was the same and she said mine was the same and I had the same laugh and I couldn’t stop laughing. And we’re both professional turners now and what a way to reconnect! I’m still smiling and shaking my head.

Bless Al Gore for inventing the Internet.

 this image to represent my focus for the ITE, I didn’t realize that part of the ITE for me would be about mending brokenness and learning again to value the self that broke.

Hurray, my first comment! Thank you, Hilary, from last year’s ITE.

I invite all you readers to chime in as you see fit. You will have to register first, but then you can comment all you like—within reason. Remember, I can cut you off if you get out of hand. Just follow the instructions on the page marked “How to comment” (the page tabs are just below the masthead, at the top of the box containing the posts), and you’ll be on your merry way.

What a day. My mind is still buzzing so much I cannot sleep.

This morning we began by attending a symposium on “Roll Call,” an exhibition of student and faculty work from eight college wood programs, sponsored by the Wood Turning Center. In attendance were Albert LeCoff and Suzanne Kopko, of the Wood Turning Center; Doug Finkel, of Virginia Commonwealth University; Don Miller and Jane Swanson, of the University of the Arts (Philadelphia); Chris Weiland and Steve Loar, of Indiana University of Pennsylvania; Karen Ernst, of Edinboro University of Pennsylvania; Bob Marsh, of Kutztown University of Pennsylvania; and Mark Sfirri, of Bucks County Community College. Also there (reportedly forced to be there by Mark Sfirri) were turners Jacques Vesery, Merryll Saylan, and Jean-François Escoulen. And then there were we four ITErs: Sean, Siegfried, Jean-François (the Second), and I.

The topic of discussion was what could be grown from the “Roll Call” exhibition (follow the link above to learn more about the show). Along the way, participants discussed the challenges of organizing and mounting such a show, the benefits to the students and the wood programs, the challenges of running university craft programs, the discounting of craft in the art world, the tensions between turning artists and hobbyists, the importance of the arts in the economic (re)development of communities . . . And they brainstormed about ways to foster student interest in turning at the college level and to expose student work to a wider audience. As an outsider to academia, I found the discussion mostly fascinating.

I also found myself envious of the students who get to study turning in a context absent for most of us who are learning either on our own or through venues oriented primarily toward hobbyists. I wonder why there is no contact between our local club, for example, and the art departments of local colleges. I don’t even know what wood programs are available locally. (Note to self: Make contact when you get home! Start a conversation.)

Both the student work and the faculty work were inspiring. You can feel the energy of exploration in the work, and it is invigorating. I felt this kind of energy at Anderson Ranch last year, creative and electric and endlessly self-perpetuating. It’s an energy I look forward to soaking up in the ITE and bringing home with me. It’s an energy that should be cultivated in communities everywhere.

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.

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.