You might say that the director of Boal Mansion, Robert Cameron, was blown away by the generosity of a local group — The Nittany Valley Woodturners.

When a severe storm hit Centre County on May 1, the Boalsburg Mansion property suffered damage. Several trees fell, and it was a daunting job to restore the property to some picture of normalcy. In the midst of evaluating the damage, the Nittany Valley Woodturners offered their help.

The members of the group not only helped to cut up downed trees, they also hauled the wood away. They then used their talents and expertise to turn the wood into cherry bowls, pens and other objects.

On May 16, the group presented the bowls to the mansion. The items will be sold in the site’s gift shop.

The Nittany Valley Woodturners is a member chapter of the American Association of Woodturners. According to a press release, the Nittany Valley Woodturners is a group of people interested in the hobby of turning wood on a lathe to produce both functional and artistic objects. The club membership has a wide ranging level of experience — from those who have recently become interested in wood turning to those who have been turning wood for more than 30 years.

The group holds its meetings on the first Thursday of the month in the woodshop of Mount Nittany Middle School in State College. Meetings include demonstrations and hands-on participation. A show-and-tell portion allows members to show what they have been working on and share tips about safety and equipment.

You may have seen some of the Nittany Valley Woodturners giving demonstrations at the Boalsburg People’s Choice Art Festival. The members take turns showing how pieces change during the turning process to account for defects in the wood.  In using the salvaged wood from the Boal Mansion destruction, the men turned damaged trees into beautiful art objects.

According to Boal Mansion director Robert Cameron, “It is just so indicative of the neighborly nature of our area, that the woodturners cleaned up the downed trees, carried them away, made these wonderful bowls and other things and donated them back to the mansion.”

CIVIL WAR BALL

 A new event to the Boal Mansion this year is the Civil War Ball, scheduled for 4 to 7 p.m. Sunday, May 28.

“You can glide over the floor of the ballroom to the latest dances of the 1800s,” said Cameron. “The Victorian Dance Ensemble of Harrisburg will be on hand to provide Victorian/Civil War era dance instruction.”

Cost for the ball is $38 per person, with museum members receiving a 10 percent discount. The museum staff will provide free entrance to the ball to all reenactors attending. In addition to enjoying the dance, guests will tour the mansion and enjoy refreshments. Costumes are encouraged, but not mandatory, and some costumes may be available for rent.

For reservations, call (814) 876-0129 or (814) 466-6210.

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Al Mather spends his days lathing away in his home basement in China as a woodturner.

He says, “I really kind of got addicted to it. Making shavings fly through the air and across your shop is fun.”

The interest came after his grandfather passed away leaving a room full tools including a lathe which he later acquired.

Mather says, “The first couple of years I just made things and then my wife kind of said where are we going to put all this stuff?”

Mather taught himself and eventually turned a hobby into a full time job.

He says, “I had a few scary moments, but I still have all my fingers and toes and stuff.”

He makes several different items from bowls to Christmas ornaments to tops, but his claim to fame is his biscuit cutter.

He says, “I make them all out of ash. I like the color in the grain that’s in it.”

Mather was inspired by an aluminum donut cutter with a red handle that belonged to his mother.

Mather says, “It took me awhile to actually get the shape that I really liked. And I’m constantly modifying it slightly saying ahhh it’s not quite perfect. I’ll make the handle a little bit taller or shorter.”

Mather’s says watching people’s reactions to his work is what makes it all worth it.

He says, “If I have a bowl out or some things they run their hand over and they say oh it’s so smooth. And the sense of that people have admired or appreciated not just wood but wood that I have done something with or to. It’s something that at the end of the day you can turn off your light and leave and be satisfied.”

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What started out as just a retirement hobby for Farragut wood turner Robert Klassen evolved into an art form.

Klassen takes wood and creates bowls, vases, boxes and decorative ornaments in a variety of colors and grains.

Farragut Arts Council presents Klassen as the featured artist for May and June. His work is being shown in Farragut Town Hall.

The artist, a retired engineer, decided to take up turned wood as a way to stay active.

“I was approaching retirement and I have to stay active,” Klassen said. “I was at a friend’s house in Cookeville one time, and he turned a piece [of wood], and I thought to myself, ‘I know I can do that.’ So, the next day I bought a machine.”

He turned wood on that machine for about two years.

“What I learned from that machine was the features I wanted in a bigger, better machine, which is what I turn on today,” he said. “It has kept me occupied.”

To enhance his skills, Klassen studies with instructors at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg. He shows his works at craft shows and is an officer with Foothills Craft Guild, the oldest such guild in East Tennessee.

He is mentoring a couple of students.

“I just enjoy the process,” Klassen said about wood turning. “I really love doing it and creating something out of a piece of wood that would have ended up in a landfill. I give [the wood] a second life.

“I could just spend all day alone out in my shop,” he added. Klassen showed a small covered box and said, “That probably took all day to make.”

Klassen started with bowls then graduated to producing boxes, platters, small ornaments and hollow forms.

One of his favorite types of wood is Australian burl wood.

“It doesn’t have a distinct grain pattern. I often end up producing a piece that is far more attractive,” Klassen said.

In the early years, Klassen made furniture, but once he started turning wood, he dropped furniture making, he added.

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He makes wood look like marble.

John Mascoll, an artistic wood turner from Safety Harbor, was named Best of Show in the 46th MidFlorida Mayfaire by-the-Lake on Saturday for his “one-of-a-kind hollow formed wood vessels” created from domestic and international exotic woods.

“A lot of people think wood work is just a craft,” Mascoll said Saturday evening before learning he was the winner. “It’s an art.”

This isn’t the first time Mascoll has earned the art fair’s highest honor. He walked away with the $5,000 grand prize in 2012, too.

It’s his 22nd year participating in the fair, which is put on by the Polk Museum of Art.

This year, he was chosen from among 160 artists across a variety of mediums. Artists will continue to display and sell their art today around Lake Morton.

Most people tell Mascoll his work looks like marble or ceramic. They’re even more blown away when they learn it’s wood.

He makes vessels from Queen Palm, White Ash, Ambrosia Maple, Tulip Poplar and more.

Some are long, some are wide, some are speckled. Some look more like wood than others. What makes them look like stone are the two types of finishes he puts on each piece: catalyzed and a semigloss that is used on cars.

Choosing wood as his creative medium was natural for him, he said.

His father was a carpenter and boat builder. While growing up in his native Barbados, Mascoll mimicked his father’s every move to learn the cutting and styling of woodworking. He uses a lathe and other cutting and hollowing tools to create his pieces.

“This not only allowed me to craft the various woods into forms and shapes more efficiently, but also the delicately crafted finials and covers that accessorize and enhance each individual piece,” he writes in his artist statement. “I wanted to create pieces that showed a connection between my world view and my inner self by exploring and embracing all aspects of this medium so as to not limit expressiveness of the work itself.”

He’s inspired by things that have greatly influenced his thought process, he said: nature, travels, family, cultural diversity, the workmanship of things made, memories and experience of the past, artists whose works he admires, and his engineering background.

He moved to the United States in 1976 and just recently retired as an engineer. He now focuses on his art full time.

“You can get several different features from the same log of wood,” Mascoll said. “This allows me to get really creative.”

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EASTERN DAILY PRESS: Blind Attleborough wood turner Ian Banstead to open his workshop in hopes of inspiring others (05/15/2017)

He produces beautiful items out of wood and feels the joy of a job well done.

But Attleborough wood turner Ian Banstead is a craftsman with one incredible difference: he cannot see what he is doing.

The 53-year-old, who has been wood turning for the past 10 years, said: “I have always used my hands. One of my grandfathers was a painter/decorator, and the other was a coach builder who later went into carpentry, so it runs in the family.

“I do it every day. It keeps my mind occupied.”

And now the 53-year-old wants to share his passion with others by taking part in two open-studio weekends where visitors will be able to see for themselves how he creates everything from clocks to bowls and pens.

Mr Banstead said: “I want to show people that there’s life after losing your sight.

“There’s not enough done to promote what disabled people can actually do, let alone visually impaired people.

“I also want people to see how I do it – when I take my wooden products to fairs, they often don’t believe I could have made them.

“They think I’ve brought them in.”

Mr Banstead was a qualified electrician before he lost his sight in 2002.

He suffers macular degeneration, which means he can see no detail of what is in front of him, but has retained some peripheral vision.

He learned to work with wood firstly at a course in Torquay run by the Royal Institute of the Blind, and then from Dick Waller, a wood tuner who ran Street Forge Workshops near Eye in Suffolk.

Mr Waller also modified equipment so Mr Banstead could work safely with wood in his own workshop.

He has no plans to stop wood turning, and is now aiming to create a range of slim-line pens with sports-themed clips.

Mr Banstead said he planned to donate proceeds from a breast-cancer awareness pen to a cancer support charity.

He said he was also hoping to find a volunteer who could take him to craft fairs and exhibitions, in exchange for petrol money.

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Liam Flynn was one of Ireland’s most respected craftspeople and an artist of international repute. Woodturned vessels of his are held in the permanent collections of the National Museum of Ireland, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. In 2011 an image of his work was featured on a special-edition Irish postage stamp.

The Irish Arts Review has called Flynn “one of the world’s most innovative and creative woodturners”. Les Reed, a former chief executive of the Crafts Council of Ireland, recently stated his “long-standing personal belief that Flynn was Ireland’s most outstanding craftsman in any discipline”. London gallery-owner Sarah Myerscough considers that Flynn’s practice “opened up the possibilities for craft to be valued as fine art sculpture”.

Liam Flynn was born in 1969 in Abbeyfeale, Co Limerick, and lived there for his whole life. Working with wood was a family tradition, and Flynn inherited the workshop of his father and grandfather. As a boy he learned to make furniture, and as a teenager discovered lathe woodturning. He taught himself from books, artistic woodturning being then a recent and mostly North American movement with few Irish practitioners. He eventually sought out and received encouragement from such pioneers of the craft in Ireland as Liam O’Neill and Ciarán Forbes. Forbes would later praise Flynn as “a true artisan-craftsman” with “an unerring sense of line”.
Exotic timbers

The trend in woodturning when Flynn started out was to emphasise the grain and other visual features of wood, and to seek out exotic timbers. Flynn was drawn more to form and line than the appearance of the wood itself, and preferred to work with locally sourced, plainer woods, especially oak. Influenced by American turner David Ellsworth, Flynn focused early on technically challenging “hollow form” vessels: thin-walled, vase-like shapes with a narrow opening at the top. He liked that such pieces announce themselves as aesthetic, not functional objects. He would produce innovative variations on this form throughout his career.

Flynn turned wood on the lathe while it was still wet – “green turning” – and subsequently allowed it to shift and change shape as it dried. The finished piece thus represents a dialogue between the artist’s technical control and the chance movement of the wood; as curator Eleanor Flegg noted, “much of Flynn’s skill lies in his ability to predict, and work with, this movement.” He often blackened his pieces, which helped accentuate form over material, and carved fluting and other patterns onto them after the turning process. In one of his signature designs a second, inner rim creates the illusion of one piece sitting inside another. He experimented in recent years with a range of forms including open, barrel-like pieces and simpler, less intensely carved surfaces.
Fly-fishing

Flynn enjoyed fly-fishing in the local Feale river, and drew comparisons between the traits of a good salmon angler and a woodturner: “lots of patience, respect for our environment, diligent planning and the ability to handle disappointment.”

Quiet, humble and thoughtful, Flynn was beloved as well as revered by his peers. He developed an international reputation as an artist of sensitivity and skill. He was the inaugural winner of the Crafts Council of Ireland Bursary award in 2005, and in 1996 won the California Gold Medal at the Royal Dublin Society National Crafts Competition. An important US-published book on contemporary woodturning claimed: “Flynn is a modern master of the neo-classical wood vessel.”

Flynn himself described his quest for excellence in form: “The challenge is to keep reinterpreting the forms . . . I’m always striving to find the perfect line.”

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Many Summit County art lovers know the woodturning work of former Park City resident Mark Huber.

He creates everything, from salad bowls to cups and other containers, with hand tools and a lathe. He also donates some of his works to Artique in Kamas.

“Woodturning is the kind of thing you can do for as long as you want, or even just for an hour,” Huber said during an interview with The Park Record. “You don’t have to wait for the weather to warm up and you don’t even have to finish a project right away once you start.”

In addition to his works at Artique, the public can view his works at the annual Utah Woodturning Symposium that will be held May 11-13 at Utah Valley University. Huber’s work will be displayed among 500 other woodturning works in the symposiums Instant Gallery.

“The symposium will ask woodturners to bring in some works for the gallery,” Huber said. “Some of the works are from vast collections, but most of the pieces were created within the past year.”

Huber — who is president of the Salt Lake City-based Utah Association of Woodturners, one of three clubs located along the Wasatch Front — has attended the symposium for the
past six years.

“The symposium flies some of the top woodturners in the world to do demonstrations,” he said. “We have people from Australia, England, Colorado, California, Virginia and Utah, and some of these people are fantastic artists.”

Huber, who used to own a small construction business in Summit County, got into woodturning while he lived in Wanship.

“I lived in Park City from 1984 to 2008 and then in Wanship from 2008 to 2016,” he said. “I bought a lathe in 2000, because I remember doing it in school and I liked doing it because I’m an old carpenter. But after I bought it, it sat in the box until 2008. That’s when things in the construction business got slow and I had time. So, I uncrated the thing and started doing a little woodturning.”

Huber said woodturning is his happy place.

“I think you should do something fun every day because that’s how life is,” he said. “Woodturning gives me something to concentrate on that isn’t work, so it’s very stress relieving, because when you have this big piece of wood turning on the lathe, and you can’t think of anything else like work the next day.

“I can sometimes go out and start turning and then three-and-a-half hours later tell myself I’d better stop for a while.”

Huber, who also led the construction of the Kimball Junction transit center, discovered the Utah Woodturning Symposium after he did some research.

“I discovered that Provo, Utah, is a world center for woodturning,” he said.
Back in the mid-1970s, Dale L. Nish, an industrial arts teacher at Brigham Young University, published a book, “Creative Woodturning.”

“The book sold extensively in the United States and Dale began contacting people and friends to get together, which would later become the symposium, Huber said.

“This was more than 30 years ago and it has grown ever since,” he said.

Huber’s work is mostly done as gifts.

“I’ll bring something to the office and if someone likes it, I’ll give it to them, or they will offer to buy it,” he said. “Every once in a while I’ll do a group of them and give (them) to Katie Stellpflug at Artique and she’ll sell them.”

Huber uses different types of wood.

“Sometimes it’s called FOG — found on ground,” he said with a laugh. “A lot of times woodturners work with what is called urban timber that people cut down and haul to the landfill. I’ll watch someone cut down a tree and then go and ask them for some wood.”

Huber likes working with walnut, sycamore — which is sometimes called Lacewood — and maple.

“There are two types of maple: silver and Norway,” he said. “Some of the pieces that have a lot of figure (design) in them are made from Norway maple.”

While Huber became more invested in his hobby, he found there are some misconceptions about woodturning.

“One big one is that you have to have a background of building or working with tools to woodturn,” he said. “I think it takes more of an artist’s touch to do this. You can even buy small lathes and turn jewelry.

“You don’t have to make a big 24-inch salad bowl. You can just do a lot of woodturning that is smaller than a teacup.”

Huber said his biggest reward is losing his thoughts in his work.

“I also like that I can, very easily, make someone happy by giving them or selling them something I have turned,” he said.

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The Hauraki Woodturners Club is ecstatic about a grant from OceanaGold towards new equipment.

Club secretary Jan Kwak said she saw a list of grants made by OceanaGold to community groups and thought she would apply.

“I rang the company’s office in Waihi and was met with a friendly response from Jeannine Wiki who helped me fill out an application.  It was really a letter which stated what we do and who in the community benefits from our group,” she said.

The club had recently purchased a new lathe and the club wanted a set of new tools to go specifically with that machine.

The club was successful and thrilled when OceanaGold’s community advisor Kit Wilson accepted an invitation  to their shed on Tower St to see what they had spent the money on.

Wilson ended up creating his very own spinning top on the lathe using the tools OceanaGold had donated.

He said his father used to spend hours turning wood but he himself never took up the craft.

“I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience today,” he said.

Kwak said the club had around 20 members.

“We would like to see more people coming along, it is a great craft to learn, and we are all willing to share our knowledge,” she said.

Now they have a permanent home the Hauraki Woodturners would like to expand to become a woodcraft club with all manner of woodworkers welcome.  

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Wood shavings flew from a block of raw maple which turned symmetrically on a motor-driven lathe. The shavings gathered on the shirt of artist Claude Dupuis of Canterbury as he used a variety of chisels and knives to carve the piece of wood into the desired shape.

Dupuis didn’t have to worry about the water falling lightly from the white tent he’d erected over his wood turning station. He’d come prepared for the gloomy weather on the morning of Concord’s Capital Arts Fest, and he was eager to show children and other passersby his beloved craft.

The woodturning station was one of two artist demonstrations set up early Saturday outside the gallery at the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen Headquarters at 49 S. Main St. Traditional basketmaker Jeffrey Gale was just feet away from Dupuis on his shaving horse, a traditional workbench used by basketmakers for centuries.

Dupuis and Gale were among several juried members of the league leading demonstrations as part of the daylong festival downtown.

At his small lathe, Dupuis turned a wooden toy top, something he’d crafted only once before. He said he wanted to make something in a short amount of time that he could then give away to those who expressed interest. The top he made in less than a half-hour didn’t spin as well as his first, but he said he had all day to practice.

“When I first started turning, I didn’t consider myself an artist. I’d worked with wood all my life, but an artist?” Dupuis said with great speculation. “No, not me!”

Not until he started making more decorative and intricate pieces did “the artist came out,” he said.

His wife had bought him a woodturning lathe in 2008 so he could make a bed post, and that’s where his story began. Nine years later, he’s still working on the bed post.

“There’s no rush, though,” Dupuis said with a laugh. “You’ve got to take these things in stride.”

While Dupuis has turned wood for just shy of a decade, Gale said basket making is how he’s made a living for the past 34 years after learning the craft as a young man. For Gale, working with 19th-century tools in his workshop in Vermont is the only way to weave. Every part of the basket comes from the white ash trees that grow on and around his property.

Gale’s baskets have been on display at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. He said he has been told that he’s the only full-time basketmaker in the U.S. still using traditional tools and local wood. Most baskets are made from reed that can be purchased at a craft store, he noted.

“Every three or four months, I walk into the woods and select a tree. It’s part of our tradition and our cultural heritage,” he said. “I love basketmaking, and I believe it’s a craft worth preserving.”

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A small woodturned bowl with red accents at the Effingham Artisan Fair that touted flame effects caught the eye of Mayor Jeff Bloemker Saturday morning.

Because of the carvings and delicate nature of the artwork, it could be found behind a small clear plexiglass protector, while being slightly weighted down, in the booth owned by Jerry Rhoads.

During a demonstration, wood shavings curled from the block of wood spinning on the small lathe that Rhoads worked with during the festival.

A carpenter and woodworker by trade, he turned to woodturning as a way to decompress after long weeks on the job. About 15 years ago made woodturning a serious hobby/business: Jerry Rhoads Woodturning of St. Joseph. He started with smaller projects and let his creativity flow into a variety of wood items.

Today, he turns out wooden bowls, pizza cutters, toy tops, pens, salt and pepper shakers – and about anything that has a round-like shape.

Bloemker presented the Mayor’s Choice Award for the piece named, “Flame Vase,” created by Rhoads.

“It goes with the theme that Effingham has a vested interest in here,” Bloemker said about the flame inspired work.

Bloemker said it fits right in with the “Flame of Hope” sculpture in front of City Hall, as well as the “Flaming Hearts,” mascot for Effingham High School.

Rhoads said the sycamore woodturned vase was shaped, then hollowed out and hand-carved. It only weighs 3.2 ounces. He used red acrylic paint as the final touch.

“That was pretty much what I was shooting for and it worked out on the first try,” said Rhoads, with a laugh.

He said he wasn’t thinking about Effingham when he made it, but it worked out to fit the city’s theme.

“I take a block of wood and put it on the lathe and start making it round,” said Rhoads. “I decide then what I want to make with it.”

He said often he has no idea what the creation might end up being, or sometimes his mind changes as he sees the creation come to life.

“Sometimes you’ll see something in the wood that you didn’t know was there and nature tells you to do something else in order to highlight that area of the wood,” said Rhoads.

Rhoads and his wife, Diane, attend about 20 shows a year, between April and December. They travel with their 2-year-old Chocolate labrador, Piper.

In its 12th year, the fair that focuses on arts featured work by artists around the region. Rhoads’ booth was among about 30 different vendors selling their wares including woodturning, jewelry, pottery, soaps and lotions, metal art and several more.

Lining the street were a variety of food vendors tantalizing taste buds of attendees.

Nostalgic Design, owned by Brian and Kristi Lange of Altamont, displayed metal artwork that has been cut using “computer numeric control.” The artist dictates the custom design and the computer driven cutter makes precision cuts. Some examples were the metal American flag with cut stars and painted; or skyscape of the St. Louis Arch, displayed at their booth. Woodworking also goes into some of the pieces.

Only in business for eight months, the couple custom create things that might be fitting for a “man cave” or office/business by decorating with pieces such as a framed motorcycle, Route 66 décor, and a guitar with LED lights, to name a few on display. He said he researched the CNC idea for two years before making the purchase.

“I’ve always done some woodworking and I started researching different CNC machines and I think I found a pretty good one,” said Brian Lange.

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