For nearly 40 years, Ashley’s marina has been a landmark on Trout Lake, near Edwards in St. Lawrence County. And tucked away in one corner of the boathouse is a woodworking shop, with lathes and a wide assortment of tools. It’s where most days you’ll find Dick Ashley at work, turning a wooden bowl, or making baseball bats for his great-grandchildren.

Ashley grew up in the North Country and learned woodworking while in high school.

He’s known for his multi-colored inlay work and stained glass windows. You’ll find some of Ashley’s art glass in the windows of the St. Lawrence County Court House in Canton.

Now in his 80s, a stroke a few years ago forced him to close the marina, but didn’t stop his woodworking. Family, Trout Lake, boating and woodworking are his passions. He’s a licensed Great Lakes pilot and goes by the nickname “Captain Dick.”

He’s reluctant to call himself an artist, but he’s spent decades bringing out the best in cherry, maple, walnut and ash. Some of his favorite pieces will be on display at the Cranberry Lake Art Show this weekend.

Todd Moe stopped by for a chat earlier this week as four generations of his family enjoyed summer fun in the lake just outside his shop.

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AAW Annual Member Exhibition: Dia•Log

The AAW is pleased to announce that the annual member exhibition title theme for 2018 is Dia•Log. Dia•log was chosen because it reflects the city of Portland’s strong community spirit and the state’s long logging history, but perhaps even more important, it speaks to the way in which our woodturning community provides common ground. As always, we look for themes that can be interpreted in multiple ways, and this one fits the bill well, offering interpretations from philosophical to down-to-earth. Working with wood is often described as a dialog between the maker and the material, and art as a dialog between object and viewer. There is also, of course, the simple truth that if an object is made of wood, it was probably once part of a log. Two artist awards will be given during the 2018 AAW International Symposium: a Masters’ Choice Award of $300 and a People’s Choice Award of $200. Entry fee: $25. Entries will be accepted online from December 15, 2017 through February 15, 2018. Deadline February 15, 2018. Learn more or sign up to be reminded when the application period opens.

12th Annual POP Exhibition – Out of the Woods: Traditional Form Revisited

Whether you love traditional forms or are an unrepentant rule-breaker, the 2018 POP (Professional Outreach Program) annual exhibition, Out of the Woods: Traditional Form Revisited offers intriguing possibilities. Now in their twelfth year, the POP shows began as invitational exhibitions with an emphasis on showing work by international professionals as well as by emerging and established artists. The shows were opened to a limited number of submitted entries several years ago. Out of the Woods will premiere at the AAW Gallery of Wood Art in Saint Paul, then travel to the 2018 AAW Symposium in Portland, Oregon, where the works are sold in an online/live auction. Funds raised support POP programs, including the Instant Gallery awards, fellowships, panel discussions, Artist Showcase, and other professional development initiatives. Entry fee: $25. Entries will be accepted online from November 1, 2017 to January 1, 2018. Deadline January 1, 2018.  Learn more or sign up to be reminded when the application period opens.

The Bascom, a center for visual arts in Highlands, North Carolina, is celebrating the craft of the chair. The 2017 American Craft Today: Chair exhibition will run from October 6 to December 10, at The Bascom -Loft Gallery, 323 Franklin Rd., Highlands, NC 28741. Juror, Brian Fireman, a nationally exhibited craftman, will select four choice award winners to be honored with cash awards. Entry fee: $35. Deadline: August 31, 2017. More information: Billy Love at blove@thebascom.org, 828-526-4949, or http://www.thebascom.org/2017/Exhibitions/american-craft-today-chairs. To apply: https://www.callforentry.org/festivals_unique_info.php?ID=4582

Mark Supik & Co. and Monument City Brewing share portions of an old veneer manufacturing-turned-pajama making factory at 1 North Haven Street in Baltimore. Both businesses are relatively small, family owned and operated affairs. Mark Supik & Co. was founded by its namesake in 1981. Brothers Ken and Matt Praay launched Monument City Brewing in 2014.
Mark Supik of Mark Supik & Co. Woodturning. (credit Anthony C. Hayes)

Touring the two businesses, the pride in ownership was evident in the wares the respective concerns produce. Also evident was the reality of a day in the life of the dedicated craftsmen. Never mind amenities such as air conditioning when you tour such working facilities. In brewing beer, high temperatures are part of the process. As for the wood shop, industrial fans and fast-turning lathes provide just enough of a breeze to keep the crew and most visitors content.

Mark Supik told the Baltimore Post-Examiner, “We don’t stock anything. Everything we do in the shop is special order.” Special orders, we learned, are a key to Supik’s business and the finished products are an architect’s delight.

The company may not stock any finished mill products, but outside, a huge cache of reclaimed wood sits basking in the sun. To the casual observer, the piles of wood have the making of a fabulous bonfire. The shop will use the salvaged wood for tap handles someday.

Inside, John Supik walked us around several works in progress. These included a just finished newel post ball and a six-foot circular table piece.

“We’ll work from drawings and pictures but also use salvaged examples for restoration pieces,” explained John.

“Most of our equipment is of the type you might find in a high school wood shop.  Two of our lathes came from Poly (Baltimore Polytechnic Institute). It’s pretty standard stuff. But because we also need to be ready to accommodate larger pieces, we have specialized machines which you might not find in other shops.”

One such machine is a large band saw that dated to the late 1800’s.

On any given day, the craftsmen might be working on a single restoration project. Or they may be turning furniture parts, spindles & balusters, balls & finials, newel posts, curved architectural moldings and columns.

“We do everything from a single piece to small runs in the hundreds. Ninety-nine percent of the wood we use is harvested on the east coast. Mahogany, cherry, poplar, along with various reclaimed woods,” John said.

Then there are the tap handles.

Mark Supik & Co. is the largest maker of beer tap handles in the United States. Their 40-page catalogue showcases hundreds of designs. Some designs are surprisingly intricate, while others are executed with simplicity and serviceability in mind.

“I can turn 25 or more an hour on this copy lathe,” said mill specialist Matt Saindon. “Especially with one of the more simple designs that doesn’t have many cuts. I could actually do more on a faster machine, but with this one, we’re able to better control the quality. At the end of the day, it has to pass muster.

“It takes time and patience to get the pattern piece set. I may go through three pieces of wood before I get it right. But once I’m done setting the incremental measurements, I just run from there. The bit of hand sanding I do while the piece is still spinning on the lathe makes it that much easier for the paint shop to turn out a great finished product.”

The finished products – past and present – are on display in the in-house museum. But for a demonstration, we just needed to walk next door to the tap room of Monument City Brewing.

Andy MaClellan – Assistant Brewer at Monument City Brewing – cheerfully guided us through the beer-making process. Our 20-minute tour included stops before carefully stacked kegs, steaming stainless steel vats and pallets of pleasing grains.

Penchant Pils, American Brown Ale, Battle IPA and the award-winning 51 Rye make up the core of Monument City’s product line. All are packaged in 1/2 kegs, 1/6 kegs, and 12 oz. cans. Seasonal brews include intriguing names like Among the Pines Double IPA, Crooked Window Belgian Dubbel, and Rooftop: a pineapple-mint IPA.

Each brew cycle nets Monument City Brewing about 31 gallons per barrel. Owner Ken Praay later told us the company’s current output is about 3000 barrels a year.

Winding our way about the factory, we saw areas where new construction is taking place. MaClellan said the company will soon be adding more tanks and a canning line. At another point, we observed two brewers carefully force-carbonating the brew with a special high pressure apparatus.

Our final stop on the tour was a long, folding table, set off to the side, replete with test tubes, beakers and other laboratory equipment. MaClellan said the equipment belongs to a PhD. student from Johns Hopkins University who is working three days a week at the brewery. The student checks for crucial concerns like the yeast cell count and purity of the product while keeping a weather eye out for harmful organisms in the beer.

The beakers seemed oddly juxtaposed against the backdrop of the huge brewing vats, but they serve as a synergistic reminder that there is a real science behind the art of brewing beer.

One quick correction: the final stop for most on the tour was not the laboratory table. It was the cozy beer garden for a pint of one of Monument City’s brews.

The Tap Room is open to the public Thursday – Saturday, with Friday nights set aside for live music and food (BPE favorite Jacob Panic is appearing there tonight.) And for those interested in learning more about the art of woodturning, Mark Supik & Co. does offer classes.

Many thanks to Mark Supik & Co. and Monument City Brewing for two fascinating tours. And thanks to the Baltimore Museum of Industry for once again demonstrating that industry in Baltimore is not just a thing of the past.
Beer tap handle by Mark Supik & Co. in Baltimore (Anthony C. Hayes)

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Now retired, Gross has merged those two hobbies into a second career, as founder of BG Artforms in Bensalem, a high-end maker of pens fashioned from coins recovered from shipwrecks, archaeological souvenirs, even animal bones.

Gross, 65, is an expert woodworker who has published books, including the Pen Turner’s Workbook and Learn to Turn: A Beginner’s Guide to Woodturning (the third edition is underway). He has made pens with exotic wood, beetle wings, snakeskin, cigar leaves, watch parts, seahorses, surgical knives, beer caps, or scrapbook photos. His pens fetch from $125 to $1,000 apiece and have been snapped up by such luminaries as filmmaker Steven Spielberg, golfer Greg Norman, and former Vice President Dick Cheney.

“Spielberg bought a Civil War pen for his writers for his movie Lincoln,” he said.

From 1979 to 2012, Gross sold medical devices such as defibrillators for such companies as Teleflex Medical in Wayne. After retiring in 2012, he had time to devote to his hobbies. His first love was diving, which he trained for after graduating  in 1973 from Trenton State University. He earned his stripes as a scuba instructor and then graduated to diving to explore underwater wrecks.

“Diving and hunting for treasure is the kind of thing most people only dream about doing,” he said, “and here I was actually doing it. I feel very lucky.”

Gross and his buddies began by diving off the Jersey Shore and other Atlantic beaches.

“We would find wrecks off the coast – there are more wrecks off of New Jersey, Massachusetts, Delaware, Maryland, and North Carolina than anywhere else,” he said. Many times, they would refer to the book Graveyard of the Atlantic to research shipwrecks off the Outer Banks of North Carolina while diving to look for historical wrecks.

“We even found a sunken German U-85 submarine and crawled inside,” he said. “There were still live torpedoes on it. The U.S. Navy had to demolish it.”

In 1980, he and friends visited an ancient wreck of the HMS Feversham, a British pay ship bound for Quebec from New York that smashed in 1711 on the rocks off Nova Scotia.

“We started digging in the sand and rocks, and — boing — all of a sudden, coins start floating up. That was the start of it.”

Gross was hooked on treasure hunting. He dove down to other wrecks off the shores of Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton, including a French ship called Le Chameau bound for Quebec that went down in 1725. All aboard perished, and debris from the wreck was scattered over miles of beach.

“We were diving in cold water in dry suits. It’s not pleasant. The wrecks are there for a reason. They don’t sink in calm water.”

In 1999, Gross and his wife, Lenora, were at a picnic when another guest noticed some pens he’d made. The guest became his first customer, at $35. That started a side business out of his hobby. He wrote articles for magazines about buying parts for pen-making. “It snowballed,” he said.

In 2012, Gross bought Arizona Silhouette, a small penmaking supply business that sells pen kits and supplies for the pen-turner, wood-turner, and woodworker, both professional and hobbyist. That includes pen kits; high-end pen kits; pen blanks; exotic wood pen blanks; pen-turning supplies; wood-turning tools including mini lathes; lathe accessories; wood-turning tools like chisels, gouges, and skews; and finishing supplies. “We pride ourselves,” he said, “in offering top-notch customer service and pen-turning education.”

Today, he teaches free seminars around the country (three-hour private sessions are $175). He also takes orders through his websites, BGArtforms.com and ArizonaSilhouette.com. His next seminar locally will take place Oct. 28 and 29 at the Mid-Atlantic Wood-Turning Symposium in Lancaster.

Gross’ main love is converting his treasure – such as colonial-era coins called “pine tree shillings” and other silver and gold coins recovered from shipwrecks – into art.

“Now, I’m making pens out of the coins I found, or I melt down others and have molds made of them, then I make those into pens,” he said. . “The coins all come from the Chameau and the Feversham.”

This fall and winter, Gross plans to exhibit at New York City’s Grand Central holiday market show, from Nov. 13 to Dec. 24 in Vanderbilt Hall.

“Only 40 vendors were selected from the entire country,” he said.

Gross hopes to grow his businesses and pass them on to his son, Michael, and grandson, Colton.

For those who want to turn a hobby into a second career, he notes, “Everybody needs a pen. You can’t write a phone number down with a dead smartphone. I’ve had people come up to me and say I’ve given them the tools to make a second income.”

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Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin Woodturners

Lansboro Arts, in Lanesboro, Minnesota, encourages woodturners who create unusual pieces to apply for their Juried Sales Gallery. The works should exhibit a unique vision and original voice, quality craftsmanship, and should be diverse and accessible to individuals from all walks of life. Questions? Contact Robbie Brokken, gallery director, at (507) 467-2446 or gallery@lanesboroarts.org  Interested artists may apply on the Lansboro Arts website at https://lanesboroarts.org/artist-opportunities/juried-sales-gallery/

Each year the Professional Outreach Program (POP) showcases two wood artists at the AAW’s Annual International Symposium. They are either experienced artists who have made significant contributions to the woodturning field but have not received appropriate recognition or emerging artists who have the potential for making significant contributions to the field. The two selected artists each give two demonstrations and receive free Symposium registration plus a small honorarium. Their work is displayed prominently in the Instant Gallery. The 2017 artists were Keith Holt and Jim Sannerud. Artist applications are invited for the 2018 AAW Symposium in Portland, Oregon. Applications will be juried by the POP committee. The deadline is December 1, 2017. Click here to apply.

Shields, a retired surgeon in Manhattan, taught himself woodturning and uses the hobby as a way to keep his time occupied, but also to spend time with other woodturners. Shields, who has been turning for more than 15 years, said it makes the time disappear.

“I go to the shop and start puttering and the time just vanishes,” Shields said.

Shields was exposed to woodturning as a kid in his dad’s woodshop, but he didn’t start actively turning himself until around 2000.

“I got the itch to get back into it,” he said.

Now he has a shop in his basement that houses his lathe, chisels and other equipment. He makes bowls, platters, tops and boxes. He also creates a Christmas ornament for each of his three daughters every year and donates pieces to Manhattan Arts Center for its annual Wrap It Up sale.

When Shields gets into his shop, he often ends up “ankle deep in chips and shavings,” he said. He can create a small top in about 15 minutes, but some larger projects can take 3 to 4 hours of turning. He often works with woods more common to the area like black walnut, but sometimes splurges on more exotic wood like cocobolo.

Shields said he considers woodturning a safe hobby, but it does require some safety equipment. He wears a face shield and dust mask when he turns and makes sure he doesn’t have any loose clothing that could get caught in the lathe.

Sheilds learned his lesson in safety early, when a large chip from a cracked piece of wood went flying and broke a fluorescent light in his shop.

“I leave that as a reminder to be careful,” he said.

One of the things Shields enjoys most about woodturning is the sense of concentration and focus he gets while working with the wood.

“When I’m doing that, I’m not thinking about anything else,” he said. “And it lets me indulge whatever artistic sense I have. But I don’t have a lot.”

The process moves from rough turning to more precise work, making it the same thickness and refining the shape. Shields said sanding is the most tedious part.

“You try to do the smoothest work with chisels to minimize the sanding,” he said.

Most of the hobby is solitary, but Shields has a community of woodturners in Manhattan to discuss the craft with. He is one of the founding members of the Flint Hills Woodturners, which meets once a month to show recent work and see demonstrations of new skills.

The club has a booth at events like Pumpkin Patch and the Makers Faire in Aggieville, showing off their skills to their public. They usually create tops to give away and do other work on small lathes at the booth.

Ned Gatewood, another member of the club, said community outreach like this is important to members so they can hopefully help others find their own passion as well.

“It’s something that is always rewarding,” Gatewood said. “You can approach it with a small late. It can be a great expense but it doesn’t have to be. It can be small bowls and the reward is just as great.”

The hobby can be solitary at times, a person alone with a lathe, but Gatewood said that doesn’t lessen the satisfaction.

“I can stand in front of a lathe for seemingly hours,” he said. “But I’m creating.”

Shields, who retired as a surgeon around 2 1/2 years ago after 34 years in the field, including 28 years in Manhattan, said spending more time in his shop has been a nice change of pace from his stressful career.

“As a surgeon, when things don’t go well, you’ve got to find a way out of it,” he said. “You can’t quit. If I’m making a bowl and make a mistake, I can throw it away. There’s not a lot of pressure.”

Woodturning has become amore relaxing way for him to work with his hands in a careful, accurate way.

“One of the appeals of surgery is doing something very precisely very well,” Shields said. “And I try to be precise with this.”

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