Worth Sharing

How cool is it to see your own piece (Journey) featured (for weeks) on the AAW homepage?

Very cool indeed!

Golden Leopard

Golden Leopard is a segmented mobile. Each of the rings (except for the smallest one) is made from 32 leopardwood segments - 161 segments in all. The outer ring measures 19-5/8" and the center ring 1-1/4". The photo below shows a test glue-up.



How did I come up with the name?

"A certain man put a pair of rabbits in a place surrounded on all sides by a wall. How many pairs of rabbits can be produced from that pair in a year if it is supposed that every month each pair begets a new pair, which from the second month on becomes productive."

This problem appeared in the third section of Liber abaci and led to the discovery for which Fibonacci is best remembered - the Fibonacci Sequence, in which each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers. The Fibonacci Sequence bears a close relationship to the Golden Mean (or Divine Proportion) - the relation, in perfect proportion, of the whole to its parts. [for more detail, see Divine Proportion by Priya Hemenway]

Larry

AAW Symposium in Albuquerque NM - June 2009

Titled Moonlight at Delicate Arch, this stabile was part of the Instant Gallery. The upper portions rotate freely above the base and the moon hanging below the arch also moves. Named for the magnificent Delicate Arch rock bridge in Utah, this piece (wenge and birdseye maple) was sold to a Memphis attorney prior to the symposium.

Erosion was created specifically for the AAW Education Opportunity Grant (EOG) auction. The cherry hollow form with my performation technique and pyrographied interior sold for $250.00, 100% of which was donated to the EOG fund.

"Nature chose for a tool, not the earthquake or lightning to rend and split asunder; not the stormy torrent or eroding rain; but the tender snow-flowers, noiselessly falling through unnumbered centuries." (John Muir)

Journey was juried into the AAW special international Spirit of the Southwest exhibit. After being displayed during the symposium, it will now travel to AAW headquarters in Minnesota where the exhibit will be on display from September through December. The exhibit will then return to Albuquerque in the spring of 2010 for another showing.

Believed to have originated in South America, the wedding vase tradition has been part of Pueblo life for centuries. The graceful spouts represent two separate lives and the bridge at the top unites these separate lives together as one. The groom’s parents provide the wedding vase two weeks before marriage during festivities when gifts and advice are also given to the bride and groom. On their wedding day, after the wedding vase is filled with holy water, the bride drinks from one side and the groom from the opposite side. The vase is then protected and cherished throughout their married life. I chose to embellish this wedding vase with spirals to represent the broadening of consciousness, the destination of a long journey. Spirals are also found in Southwestern legends like that of Ho-Bo-Bo, the spirit of the whirlwind. The black-on-black coloring honors the work of Maria Martinez, the potter of San Ildefonso.

To purchase Journey, please contact Tib Shaw, Gallery Coordinator, at AAW or call (651) 484-9094. (Price: $2,400; all pieces must remain with the exhibit until all showings have concluded)

To see my album of photos from this weekend event, please click here.

Journey

The letter was in the mailbox today ~ Journey has been accepted into the juried Spirit of the Southwest exhibit that debuts at the 2009 AAW Symposium in Albuquerque!

YES!!

Japanese Bowls, a Memphis Perspective

Text by Joan Kelly and video by Larry Sefton

Japanese Bowls, a Memphis Perspective is a project of the Mid-South Woodturners Guild. This endeavor is patterned after a similar collection of turnings, Japanese Bowls, A Western Perspective, by internationally recognized woodturning artists. In early 2007, the American Association of Woodturners was given several dozen roughed-turned rice bowls. These bowls were left over from a New York exhibition (which included a demonstration component) of traditional Japanese urushi ware, an art form that dates back 6,000 years. The artists were invited to take one of the rough bowls, which were essentially identical, and finish them in their own unique styles.

Dennis Paullus, a long time member of MSWG, undertook the effort to duplicate the rough turned traditional bowls like the Japanese produce. These rough bowls are turned from green wood and are approximately five inches tall and five inches in diameter. They are left about an inch thick to allow for warping of the wood as it dries. After a suitable drying period, guild members were invited to take one of the bowls and create the Memphis Perspective.

Our members bring a wide variety of experience to the lathe. The only requirement for guild membership is having an interest in woodturning. This show represents the efforts of people who turn “just for fun” and people who aspire to be gallery artists; people who have turned for a short while, and people who have turned for decades.

For more information about the Mid-South Woodturners Guild, please visit our web site at http://www.midsouthwoodturners.com/

My Woodturnings 5 Minute Video

Natural Edge Cherry Burl

Natural Edge Sweetgum

Cats

Bird Soup

Plum Crazy

Titled Plum Crazy because if someone had told me that I would have made this bowl four years ago when I first stated woodturning I would have told them they were "Plum Crazy."

It is made from what I call road kill wood - Boxelder that I found at the side of the road waiting to go to the city mulch dump. The bowl was thin wall turned including the bottom. The images were branded into the wood and pierced. PC was completed by air brushing and top coating with a protective finish.

Plum Crazy won a blue ribbon at the Memphis 2008 Delta Fair and Music Festival.

Tree Of Life