My Turn

The Steve Russell article on the Center Saver that I mentioned was actually in Volume I of his DVD, an e-book, not in Volume III as I originally stated (I have corrected the last post), and the article is also available on his website. Had I spent a little more time with the DVD I would have discovered that Volume III, which is a DVD video, actually has a video chapter on using the Center Saver. Now that I have viewed it, I’ll try again.

I also discovered in reviewing both the Kelton instructions and Russell’s article that they contradict each other on the height of the cutting blade. The Kelton instructions say, “Adjust the height of the tip so that it is EXACTLY ON OR JUST BELOW CENTER. (If you have the tip above the center, the tool will tend to buck and jerk when you commence cutting.)” Russell says, “The tip of the blade should be set at centreline, or slightly higher.”

I followed Russell’s recommendation and had the blade slightly higher than center—mainly because the tool post is too long for my lathe’s tool rest, so I couldn’t get the blade down to center without cutting the tool post, and I was too impatient to try out my new toy to stop and find a hacksaw.

Let that be a lesson to me. I will cut the post down and try again, at center and slightly above and below, and report back on what I discover.

An interesting week, not terribly productive in terms of finished work, but I did make progress in less direct ways.

I tried out my new McNaughton Center Saver. It wasn’t quite as straightforward as I was expecting. The biggest complaint I have is that the system comes with insufficient documentation. There isn’t even an illustration of the setup of the unit. And the instructions on how to use the Center Saver are minimal. I’m lucky: I have seen Mike Mahoney demonstrate the McNaughton system, so I had some idea of what to do, but without that experience, I would have felt pretty lost. I think Kelton should include at least a brief video of its use (on CD or DVD)—or at the very least make such a video available for free online. I know that Mahoney has published a DVD on using the Center Saver, and I trust that it’s good, since he is an expert with it, but it’s also $25. Instead, I used a helpful article by Steve Russell as a guide to using the system. (Kelton does provide a shorter version of the article on its website; I suggest you print it out to have on hand as you try out the system. The version I used came from the DVD Woodturning with Steven D. Russell, Volume I.)

I prepped two pieces of wood, one mulberry, the other eucalyptus. Both were heavily checked, and this may have caused some of the problems I had, though ultimately that didn’t appear to be the case. I started with the mulberry and the least curved of the curved blades, trying to remove the largest possible core. I cut the first couple of inches without problem, but then the blade began to catch, and catch hard, so that the lathe stopped altogether, and this with minimal forward pressure. I tried systematically adjusting as many variables as I could identify—widening the kerf, changing the angle slightly, pushing even less, making sure the blade was up against the cross brace, etc.—but the blade kept catching.

I finally switched to the eucalyptus chunk and fared better. I got much deeper without a catch, then when the blade did begin to catch, I was usually able to back off a little and resume without the lathe stopping dead—though it did stop a few times. Eventually, I was able to cut the whole core out. Woohoo! The wall thickness of the outer bowl was even fairly consistent, so I had followed the outer curve pretty closely.

I was exhausted by the effort, however. I went home early, and I was ready for bed by 7 p.m. that night, whereas (as some of you know from my posting times) I’m usually a real night owl. And I was clearly using muscles I wasn’t accustomed to using, because I had pain in my hand, my elbow, and my shoulder!

I haven’t given up on the Center Saver by any means, but I do have to set it aside for a while as I concentrate on preparing for my next show, which comes up in just a little more than four weeks. My inventory is still low from my fall shows, so I need to get in gear and get productive. In the meantime, if anyone has any suggestions on improving my Center Saver technique, please share!

Also this week, Pat and I rearranged the studio, relocating my old lathe to the opposite end of the room, in front of the garage door. I also finally installed pegboard on the divider behind my lathe, so I have my tools better organized and at hand, which will let me be more efficient. Of course, that means that the shop photos I just posted are already out of date. Ah, well.

I recently learned a Japanese braiding technique called kumihimo, using eight strands. The notched foam disk and the plastic bobbins make the process very simple and portable. This is my first project. I’m excited about the prospect of combining some braids (not this thick or this colorful probably) with some vessels. For scale, the disk is about 6 inches in diameter.

I’m gradually getting settled with my new lathe in my still-newish studio digs, but here are some pictures, finally.

I plan to install pegboard on the divider behind my lathe for easy tool access.

I’m still finding places for many things. In the meantime they clutter my work bench. Notice the handy space for wood storage below my bench.

You can see the lathe (a 1.5-hp Delta) and work space of the studio’s owner and my shop mate, Pat Reddemann, in the background.

Right now, my old lathe abuts the new one. The plan is to set up my vacuum chuck on the old lathe for both Pat and I to use whenever, without having to change the setup on our primary lathes. We will probably find a new spot for my old lathe soon, so I’ll have more working room at the end of my new lathe.

Pat got this new 18″ Grizzly bandsaw just a couple of months ago and has already gone through several blades.

This storage area and my tool chest area to my right as I face my lathe. The cabinet is full of wood. The shelves hold mostly half-finished pieces and finishes and solvents.

Pat and I share larger logs we’ve harvested together: a lot of mesquite, but also some African sumac and pepper tree.

Under the tarp is yet more of the wood I’ve harvested from locally felled trees, mostly mesquite.

This has been an amazing year, full of blessings and dislocation and pain and healing and promise and opportunity and redemption. Most of all, it has been a year of realizing how much support I continually receive from all of you—family, friends, fellow turners and artists, mentors and teachers, customers and collectors, would-be customers, gallery owners, program administrators and staff, students, blog readers, well-wishers—all of you who with your words and actions communicate your support for me and my artwork.

Because of your generosity in all its forms, I celebrate a year of successes small and large, an abundance of love, a wealth of prospects.

I thank you and wish you a happy and prosperous new year. May you receive back tenfold all you have given me.

This post falls under the “and more” subject of this blog (“A weblog about woodturning, artmaking, and more”).

I like to think myself courageous in the face of any challenge, but I’ve recently had to learn a new kind of courage: the courage to be happy.

It’s a strange concept for someone who has spent her life fighting—to survive, to be, to want to live.

This strange new idea was reinforced recently by a touching scene in an episode of the TV series Pushing Daisies (“Smell of Success,” broadcast November 21, 2007). In the scene, Vivian Charles, one of a duo of retired synchronized-swimming sisters who have been grieving the apparent death of their niece, addresses her sister, Lily.

“It used to make you so happy, the water. I think it’s brave to try to be happy. You’ve gotten so comfortable being unhappy. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to wake up in the morning and choose to be happy? To let the water wash everything away?”

The episode ends with a sweet rendition by Vivian of Cat Stevens’s “Morning Has Broken” as the sun breaks through rain and the sisters return to the water.

I continually revisit questions about the nature of art and artmaking, and I’ve been pondering them a lot lately.

Although I do embrace what Mary Oliver says in her poem “The Swan” (see my post for July 31) and although the act of creating beauty both delights and satisfies me, I also must recognize that I—always, and more and more—aspire to make art that not only is beautiful but also expresses meaning—by which I mean it reveals a truth.

Here is the current version of my ever-evolving definition of artmaking, at least as it pertains to me: an act of rendering (with all that word’s wonderfully resonant connotations) objects and experiences that communicate some discovered emotional truth about the nature of life (mine specifically or life in general).

I realize that this definition doesn’t mention “beauty.” On the one hand, I could accept as a premise Keats’s “‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty.’” On the other hand, perhaps I have been conflating “beauty” and “art.” Chekhov said, “Art tells the truth” (Picasso said, “Art is the lie that tells the truth”)—and beauty is enough because beauty is a truth—but must art be beautiful? Certainly, I do not find all art beautiful—is that because I don’t get the truth their makers have tried to express? Then again, not all truth is beautiful. I can find beauty in even many painful truths but certainly not in all.

For me, for now, the bottom line is that I have not yet wanted to create art that was not also in some way beautiful. That may be my own limitation. For now, though, I leave for another time the question of whether the art I make must be beautiful.

Thinking about expressing meaning leads me to think about language, and all the vocabularies I can use to communicate.

More than a vocabulary, each art is really a language of its own, with its own grammar and system of signs—and its own way of apprehending the world. From studying several languages (English, German, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese), I know how greatly concepts and perception (the roots of culture) can differ from language to language.

I speak woodturning now, and live in a world of curves. As a writer, I also speak not just English, but the specific dialect of formal written English. This second (first, third, whatever) language greatly shapes my wood art, as does Japanese. To a lesser extent, I also speak ceramics (mostly the dialect of vessels) and music (a family of languages: melody, rhythm, dance) in my art. I’m just beginning to try a few words and phrases from fiber arts (sewing, resist dyeing, weaving, papermaking) and metalworking in a few pieces.

One of the qualities I love most about English is its robustness, vigor that I attribute largely to the ease with which it assimilates concepts and vocabulary from other languages. (I suppose English—at least American English—and American culture?— is a bit like the Borg of languages: resistance is futile.) Such robustness is a quality I aspire to as an artist.

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.

All the ITErs were asked to write artist statements for the exhibition. I have asked for copies of everyone’s statements from the Wood Turning Center and will post them as soon as I get them. In the meantime, here is mine, expanded from a previous statement, published on my website: 

Simple and sensual, my work is about form and substance, containment and expression, the interplay between lift and mass.

As an art medium, wood is unique in that it once lived, and lived long, rooted in the earth, formed as much by the tree’s own life force as by the external forces acting upon it. Wood can be treated as an inert material; it can be cut, carved, colored, bent, planed, pulped; like any other medium, an artist can impose on it whatever form and texture its physical nature will allow. But like a human face, its deepest beauty lies in its record of survival, in its singularity of being, and if an artist chooses to address that aspect of its nature, then the treeness of the wood, that original life energy, can live on in the made object. This is what I try to achieve in turning—to approach the wood as one vessel of energy to another and to make of that interaction a literal vessel.

The quality that I strive to achieve in each turning is presence.

I believe that an object made so, with reverence for its source, retains the spark of that source. Such objects when held or beheld can remind us of our connection to the numinous and the material, the spirit and the earth, a healing connection that grounds us and elevates us and restores us to the whole.

For me, the ITE has been precisely about healing, about transforming brokenness, integrating it into the beauty of the whole. In the work I have produced here, this has involved playing with brokenness in many forms: sometimes deliberately breaking the surface or the wall of a vessel, sometimes working with an existing break, sometimes responding to an accidental break. In various pieces, I have used the brokenness as a feature, exaggerated a break, excised breaks, mended breaks. In the process of this work, I have been transformed by the ITE, both artistically and personally, and I expect the exploration I have begun here to continue for a long time to come.

Saturday, August 4, the Wood Turning Center had a members’ meeting and lunch, which Jean-François, Peter, Sean, Siegfried, and I attended, followed more in-depth gallery talks by each of us. That marked the official end of this year’s ITE and the last time we were all together as a group.

Afterward, Jean-François, Sean, and I headed off to Jane’s house for a celebratory dinner, while Siegfried and his wife, Gudrun, went to Phil and Monika Hauser’s, and Peter went to play with friends.

Siegfried and Gudrun left Philadelphia on Sunday, August 5, I believe, for three weeks or so of travel in the U.S. before they return to Germany. Sean flew home on Monday, August 6. I spent Monday cutting and packing wood to ship back to Arizona (mainly my beloved pear and a holly tree I acquired the day before, thanks to Jane), then headed off to New Jersey for a week at the shore with my partner and her family. Jean-François’s wife, Marie-Claude, arrived Tuesday, August 7, for a few weeks’ visit, mostly in the Philadelphia area, most of which they spent as guests and then housesitters at Jane’s. I believe they will be returning to France this weekend.

And that’s how the ITE ended, folks.

But as Albert likes to emphasize, the ITE isn’t just an experience; it’s a beginning. So stay in touch. I’m sure there will be plenty more to come from each of us.

The opening was a tough night for me. My vertigo was very bad, and it was all I could do to stay upright and smiling, so most of the photos below were taken by Jane, and I can’t tell you a lot about the events of the night. Vince’s films were screened, as was my video of the artists talking. Each of the ITErs talked about his or her experience, and each of us signed a plaque from a Stubby lathe that the Wood Turning Center (WTC) is raffling off in October. Also signing the plaque were Jane, Gus, Fleur Bresler, and other WTC board members.

After the opening, the WTC staff, the ITErs, and several esteemed guests (chiefly the WTC board members) went out for a celebratory dinner at the Pub restaurant, courtesy of the WTC. Elisabeth couldn’t be with us, as she had to leave town right after the opening, but the rest of us had a good time letting down and letting go.

The morning of Friday, August 3, we made one last field trip, to see one of the largest pipe organs in the world, the Wanamaker organ, right in the heart of Philadelphia, at what is now Macy’s. Our guide was Scott Kip, who had substituted for Jane as shop supervisor for a week while she was on vacation and whose day job is working on restoration and maintenance of the organ. It was a fascinating visit, one I would recommend to anyone in Philly.

Here is the façade of the organ. None of these are working pipes. The actual organ is housed behind the facade, spread over seven floors.

Charlie Brown was visiting Macy’s at the same time, for some kind of anniversary.

Every one of the nearly 29,000 individual pipes of the organ can be played from this console. (Every note of every simulated instrument is a separate pipe.)

Some of the variety of pipes that make up the organ. Material, length, diameter, and other factors create the tone of each pipe. Each pipe must be tuned separately.

The organ depends on an extensive network of wooden channels that move the air that make the pipes sound.

This is truly an awesome instrument. I wish I could convey how amazing it was to see how it operates—and then to hear it played. There are daily concerts at noon and, I think, at 5 p.m., so check it out for yourself if you can.

Tuesday and Wednesday, we mostly spent cleaning up the shop. What a mess we had made! We swept up bags and bags of shavings and scraps and dust. And we had to sort through all of the tools and equipment and materials to separate what belonged to the Wood Turning Center and what belonged to the university. We also went to the Wood Turning Center to turn in our artist statements and corrections for the labels and to check out the installation. I had one piece, called “In Her Dream,” that required special installation, as you can see below. The shadows in the photos are distracting, but I’m really pleased with how the piece and branch seem to float.

I also videotaped Sean, Siegfried, Jean-François, and I talking about the work and our ITE experience, which I later turned into a Quicktime movie. I lack the software here to convert it into a format suitable for uploading, but I will continue working on that. It is available for viewing at the Wood Turning Center.

Thursday evening, August 2, all of us except Lesya—Peter came in from New York a day early, and Elisabeth pulled herself away from the museum—met with Albert at the Wood Turning Center. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss what single piece represented for each of us our ITE experience. The Wood Turning Center was acquiring a piece from each of us for its permanent collection, and the input from us would be considered in determining what those pieces would be.

To backtrack a little, Jean-François, Siegfried, Sean, and I had met individually with Albert on the previous Sunday to discuss our ITE experience and the work we had produced. Speaking for myself, it was an enlightening conversation. Talking through my pieces chronologically with Albert helped me see my experience as a whole for the first time. The conclusion I reached in that conversation was that there were two pieces that represented my experience—“Offering,” the first spouted vessel I turned, and “Learning to Cope: Pear Incognito under a Mantle of Cherry”—and I leaned toward the latter as the ultimate choice.

The purpose of the meeting wasn’t for each of us to say what piece we would choose for ourselves, but to hear what everyone else would choose for us—that is, to hear how our fellow ITErs perceived our work and our experience. The discussion was fascinating. It was a challenge to look objectively at each other’s work, to set aside our personal preferences and look at the work in the context of the individual artist.

Being away from the rest of us gave Elisabeth and Peter interesting perspectives. In particular—though perhaps not surprisingly, given her training—Elisabeth seemed to see each of us the most clearly.

Some of our views were widely divergent to begin with, but in the end, we seemed to reach consensus on everyone. For me, the piece everyone settled on was the cloaked pear bowl, and that is the piece the Wood Turning Center did acquire. I hope that the Wood Turning Center will indicate on their site which pieces were acquired for each of us, because in the blur of the opening, I didn’t register what they were for the others.

Tuesday evening, July 31, after a day spent cleaning the shop, we drove to New Jersey for a nice, relaxed, and tasty dinner with Phil and Monika Hauser. Phil is vice president and treasurer of the Wood Turning Center and is himself a turner. Phil and Monika are Swiss, so Siegfried had a good time speaking German for a change. Phil also generously gave us some chunks of coolibah to take home and turn.

Lesya ended up doing dances with one of Sean’s pieces, one of mine, and Peter’s chainsawn bench. Sean, Siegfried, Jean-François, and I also participated in the dance with the bench, with Lesya directing us from the sidelines. Vince filmed all of the dances on Saturday, July 28, and the finished videos were shown at the opening and are available for viewing at the Wood Turning Center throughout the “allTURNatives” exhibition. 

I have embedded the finished videos here. They can also be found on Vince’s website. If the embedded video does not appear below, click here to view the videos on YouTube.

Well, I’m finally back to wrap up my documentation of the ITE. Reentry has been a challenge—more about that perhaps in a later post—and between the time lapse and my vertigo, my memory of some things is a bit blurred. But the photos aren’t. So I apologize for the delay, but I hope you enjoy the posts that follow.

to say that I’m on vacation for a week with very limited access to the Internet. I’ll be reporting on the exhibition opening and the winding down of our ITE—with photos—as soon as I get back to civilization next week, so check back then!