Transforming Vision: William Hunter

ArtDaily.com reports on this exhibition at the Long Beach Museum of Art in California:

"Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Hunter led the field as the medium evolved from its foundations in traditional woodturning practices to its emergence as a vehicle for artistic invention and formal experimentation".

Transforming Vision presents a retrospective of sculptor William Hunter's work from 1970 - 2005. It opens on Friday with a symposium "Turning Wood Into Art" which is sponsored by the Collectors of Wood Art who are also planning other events for the weekend.

The exhibition will be on tour until 2008 so you also have the opportunity to see it at the Oakland Museum of California, the Mobile Museum of Art in Mobile, Alabama, the Wood Turning Center in Philadelphia and at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Massachusetts. Accompanying the exhibition will be a 128-page, fully illustrated catalogue with a major essay on Hunter’s work and its role in advancing contemporary wood sculpture.


Technorati Tags: william hunter, woodturning, sculpture, Long Beach Museum of Art, Collectors of Wood Art

Pfeifer and Flynn on collaboration

As regular readers of the ToolRest will know, Liam Flynn and Hilary Pfeifer took part in the ITE this year. They worked together on some collaborative pieces and thanks to Vincent Romaniello you can watch some video where they discuss the collaborative process and how they feel about it.

The video starts with Albert LeCoff talking about the collaboration as the Wood Turning Center sees it. Unlike a piece being passed from one person to another, collaboration at the ITE results from artists sharing their work and living space for several weeks and ideas going back and forth on an on-going basis.

Technorati tags: woodturning, wood turning center, art, collaboration, collaborative

Table saws are dangerous

Last weekend at the Pictou Craft Market I had three woodworkers at my booth comparing their injuries from table saws.

The first to arrive was a freshly bandaged finger. It sounded like the nail and some skin was gone, but otherwise it will probably heal reasonably well. Just then a friend of mine passed by so I called him over to show his scarred finger off to us. Meanwhile a fellow from a nearby booth saw what was going on and came over to show off the four-and-a-bit digits on his hand.

Coincidence? Certainly. But considering how few woodworkers I know, an awful lot of them have injuries from circular saws. Another friend of mine nearly lost his thumb to a radial arm saw last winter. Fortunately it has healed very well.

While all these cases can joke about it now, one local dentist had to give up his practice after a table saw accident since he lost the sense of feel to his injured finger. His career wiped out in milliseconds which must have hurt him both emotionally and financially.

The moral of the story? Learn all about table saw safety before using one. Reading about it is a help, but professional training would be best.


Technorati tags: Pictou, table saw, woodworking, safety, health and safety, workshop safety

Ornamental turning - Joshua Salesin

It is rare to come across anyone specialising in ornamental turning, so it was a pleasure to find the website of Joshua Salesin. Joshua has his studio in Santa Cruz, California, and his work can be found in galleries across the USA. He makes bowls, boxes, cups and jewelry which you can see in his online gallery.

Joshua's studio includes antique machines and tools such as a Holtzapffel ornamental lathe and a Lienhard rose engine lathe.


Technorati Tags: woodturning, ornamental woodturning, Joshua Salesin

ITE winds up

The International Turning Exchange is nearly over and Hilary Pfeifer has completed her installation project. This is quiet a long post and one really needs to see several of the pictures to really understand what it is all about. There are no hollow vessels, natural edges or exotic woods here. Just some blocks of wood turned on multiple axes, painted red , blue and yellow and hung on wires in an alleyway. I guess this is what happens when you let an artist loose with a lathe - something different to the norm. The title for this installation is "Liminal Space".

An exhibit of the work created by the 2006 International Turning Exchange opens on Friday. AllTURNatives: International Turning Exchange 2006, Aug. 4 - Oct. 21, 2006. On Saturday there is an opportunity to join the 2006 ITE artists and Executive Director Albert LeCoff for a gallery talk and discussion panel featuring the art created during this year's residency.

Technorati Tags: woodturning, art, wood turning center, installation art, art exhibition