HAMILTON COMMUNITY NEWS: Woodturner Hugh Widdup joins Dundas’ Beyond The Valley Studio Tour (04/22/2016)

Participants in the upcoming Beyond The Valley Studio Tour will have the unique opportunity to watch as wood is turned into elegant items like goblets, bowls and pepper mills.

Woodturner Hugh Widdup’s shop on Wellington Street in Dundas will for the first time join the tour, scheduled for May 28 and 29 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Last year Widdup was the guest artisan at Pavlo Pottery in Rockton.

“I liked meeting people and explaining and exposing them to woodturning,” Widdup said of his experience. “A lot of people know what a woodturned bowl looks like, but they have no idea what part of the tree it comes from.”

Widdup started woodturning in 2003. He wanted to make a Windsor chair but didn’t know how to turn the spindles. A visit to a meeting of the Golden Horseshoe Woodturners Guild solved the spindle riddle, but the dining chair was quickly forgotten as Widdup was introduced to more appealing projects.

With an eye for detail and sense of timeless design, Widdup has since carefully crafted one-of-kind, sometimes custom-ordered, scoops, ornaments, bowls of all sizes, goblets and salt and pepper mills.

Widdup worked in the manufacturing sector until retiring in January to pursue his woodturning hobby full-time. He now spends most weekdays in the shop he built in his backyard in 2009.

“I like being able to take a block of wood and to make a bowl, just to see it change and develop and take a shape and become something functional,”he said.

Ninety-five per cent of the wood Widdup uses in his work — primarily cherry, walnut and maple — is locally sourced, and has already been cut down.

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THE UNION: Wood work: Mike Snegg’s handcrafted wooden bowls on display at Nevada City art gallery (04/21/2016)

Mike Snegg has made a name for himself in Nevada County and beyond with his business ventures. In the 1970s, he opened Good Morning Natural Food and Grain, a grocery store in Nevada City. He eventually transitioned into a career in real estate. He launched Grass Roots Realty in 1980; two years later, he bought one of the first Coldwell Banker franchises in the country; he would eventually own four such franchises in the area.

He has made a living buying multi-tenant industrial buildings and commercial real estate, and started Industry Capital Advisors, a real estate investment company now run by his sons in the Bay Area.

He never really saw himself becoming an artist.

But in 2008, Snegg’s father passed away, and Snegg inherited the entire contents of his dad’s wood shop — including a lathe, a machine that can be used to shape wood.

Snegg was curious about the tool.

“Maybe I should try making bowls,” he thought.

He began transforming burls — tree growths that usually form due to some kind of stress — into handcrafted wooden bowls. Woodturning quickly became his passion — just ask his wife, Nina.

“Every day he comes home and he barely says hi to me,” she joked. “He runs to the shop to make another bowl.”

Several of Snegg’s large-scale wooden bowls will be on display in a new contemporary nature-inspired art show being held in honor of Earth Day at the LeeAnn Brook Fine Art Gallery, 300 Spring St. in Nevada City.

“Where on Earth,” which runs through May 29, kicks off tonight with a reception from 6-9 p.m. at the gallery. Snegg’s work will be complemented by Brook’s mixed media drawings and paintings; each painting will feature a tree from which Snegg’s bowls were made. The exhibition will also feature a video showing how Snegg creates the wooden bowls.

Snegg, 68, is originally from Southern California. His father David was something of an entrepreneur, Snegg said, pioneering the equipment rental industry. David eventually started The Tool Crib in Pasadena, which would grow to become one of the largest equipment rental companies in the United States.

David was also a welder and a woodworker. After he sold The Tool Crib, he took a furniture-making course at a local community college. He took to the craft so well he was nicknamed “Geppetto” for all the furniture he made, Snegg said.

Snegg said when he began to explore woodturning, he was just following in his father’s footsteps. He got a book on woodturning, and “just taught myself until I was fairly proficient at it,” he said.

Then, he took his studies to the next level, participating in bowl-turning class with Jerry Kermode, a renowned bowl-maker in Sebastopol. Snegg has continued to study with several artists experienced in the medium.

Woodturning is an involved process, Snegg said. It starts with a burl that can weigh up to several hundred pounds. The wood goes on to the lathe, which spins it around. Snegg uses a variety of tools to shape the wood and hollow it out. When the bowls are finished, Snegg places them in the basement to dry, which can take months; Snegg weighs a finished bowl every day, and when its weight holds steady for several days in a row, the bowl has dried.

The finished products display the natural grains and imperfections of the original wood they were made from — one of Snegg’s favorite aspects of the process.

“The neat part of working with wood like this is you don’t know what’s inside or how it’s going to look until you dig it out,” Snegg said. “You never know what it’s going to look like until you start cutting it.”

Snegg’s bowls are collected by people all around the world — including former President Jimmy Carter. Thanks to Snegg’s son’s involvement with the Carter Center, the family was invited to a Carter Center event; a member of the center’s staff got word of Snegg’s artistic efforts, and asked Snegg to bring a bowl for Carter, who is also a woodworker.

Snegg crafted an olive wood bowl, which Snegg dubbed “The Olive Bowl for Peace,” for Carter. When the two men met at The Carter Center, they talked about sanding and finishing wood, and Snegg told Carter about the process he goes through to make the bowls.

“No politics, just woodworking,” Snegg said of their exchange.

Brook and Snegg had been acquaintances for many years before Brook heard about Snegg’s woodturning. Snegg’s bowls are featured regularly at Brook’s gallery, on a rotating basis.

Brook said Snegg’s sense of design really stands out to her because he’s constantly exploring new sizes and techniques.

“You can see he really pushes himself to explore what’s next,” Brook said.

Snegg said it took him awhile to see himself as an artist and see his woodturning as art — but that’s never been a question for those who know him or know his work, Nina Snegg said.

“It’s developed into something that’s really important to him,” she said.

She added, “It’s a lifelong passion.”

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RUIDOSO NEWS: Artist Madeleine Sabo is a guiding force for sight-impaired artists (04/22/2016)

Local artist Madeleine Sabo won’t allow anything come between her and doing what she loves.

That includes continuing to create her art despite losing her vision several years ago. Sabo has since adapted well and continues to create her works of art using her skills in wood turning, painting and pottery.

After learning about her “art without sight,” New  Mexico Commission for the Blind Orientation Center in Alamogordo contacted Sabo about hosting an event for program participants to educate them about the techniques she employs in making her creations.

“We do activities weekly to show people that blindness need not limit one from having a full and productive life,”  New  Mexico Commission for the Blind Orientation Center director Lucy Alexander said. “We can do anything we want to do. We just employ alternative techniques to get the job done.”

Alexander said the commission’s main goal is to give participants the skills needed to make being blind a mere inconvenience instead of a major impediment to working and living a full and productive life.

“Often times people feel like their life is over, but I feel like I have the good news, ‘You’re life is far from over, you’re just going to have to approach it differently with a new normal,'” Alexander said.

Sabo herself benefited from the commission’s assistance. She uses a tool they provided she calls her “magic wand.” With the wand she records the names of  items she uses so she can identify them.

“It is the coolest the piece of  equipment the commission has given me,” Sabo said. “I’ve been very fortunate to have the commission for the blind help me out with recovering from losing my sight to adjusting to do these art works still.”

While the commission usually focuses on teaching participants basic wood working and home repair,  the event offered the group of nine a chance to get their creative juices flowing as they toured Sabo’s home and workshop in Nogal Friday.

“I’m so honored that they picked me,” Sabo said about the commission. “They teach them everything. It’s a wonderful facility for adults.”

“We went in to show that you can participate in leisure activities of your choice,” Alexander said.

Sabo gave the group a tour of her home and workshop, offering information about the techniques she uses at her wood lathe and clay pit. The group also had the opportunity to try their hand a making their own pinch pots under Sabo’s direction.

“Each one had a different interest,” Sabo said. “Some were excited about the wood turning. Some were excited about playing with the clay and learning about the different processes. The main things is like I told them, their hands are one of the most important tools.”

Although woodworking or pottery may not be to everyone’s liking, Sabo emphasized “at least you can do whatever you want to do.”

“I was trying to encourage them,” Sabo said. “If you’ve got a little bit of a challenge. Look on the bright side, you can still do anything, you might have to change it a little, but you can do it. That’s the main thing I pushed.”

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