"Alas, poor Yorick!" ...or...not a bad live oak bowl.
I have been working with wood, sometimes professionally and sometimes out of passionate interest, for more than 25 years. Early in my career I worked with Charles McRaven on custom homes of either log or post and beam construction. I got to work with some terrific material including American chestnut and heart pine–both commercially extinct now. That was also an interesting experience for the connection to the past–both the early history of our nation as well as the craftsmen who first worked that wood. I have also built furniture and cabinets over the years, and have been turning since 2003.
My primary creative pursuits include writing, photography, music, and woodworking, although I’ll do anything from cooking to stone masonry that offers a creative outlet. My formal education has focused ecology and archeology, with as many courses on photography and writing as I could sneak in. I have lived in Australia and traveled overland across Asia, and otherwise grew up in the Blue Ridge foothills of Virginia before shifting west to Utah, Nevada, and now the Methow Valley of Washington.
As a woodturner, I have studied under Richard Raffan, a master at combining the artistic and the functional. Other turners who have influenced my approach include James Prestini, Bob Stocksdale, David Ellsworth, and Mike Mahoney. I am always interested in direct commissions as well as offering turning demonstrations. I enjoy sharing my passion for this activity and welcome contact with other interested people.
So much time and patience goes into the growth of a tree. Depending on the species and the luck of the draw, some individual trees can live for more than a thousand years. During its lifetime a tree provides shelter and food for a lot of lives. I like the idea that turning wood into an object that can be handed down for many more generations honors the long life of the tree that came before the bowl or plate or whatever I create. The idea of honoring the wood is one that takes different forms in different cultures, but it is a uniting theme among people who are lucky enough to get to work with this terrific medium.