Contemporary Wood Collective

A new group has been formed with 25 invited members called The Contemporary Wood Collective. It is based in Bristol but members come from all parts of the UK.
A temporary information statement was released a few weeks back it is reproduced below.

“A new group in woodturning has been formed. The idea for the group came from some of turners who decided it might be interesting to see if a project where participants shared ideas, skills and experiences could add something to the development of turning in the UK. The focus of the group is on creative approaches to making and it will supplement the work of the current organising bodies. The intention is to keep the group small so there will be a maximum of 25 invited members participating and each must make a commitment to the aims and objectives.There will be quarterly group sessions with talks, demonstrations and invited guests from other craft disciplines sharing information and knowledge.The group will provide supported opportunities for members to experiment with their approaches to turning. The intention is to hold group exhibitions to show the outcomes of this new initiative.Any new developments or processes that are forthcoming from this collaborative approach will be shared with the wider turning community.”

At the initial meeting it was decided to investigate the theme of Black Magic. Members were asked to produce a piece of work for the October meeting for presentation and critique. My piece is shown below

Working to the theme of Black Magic I decided to use the opportunity to both address a couple of shortcomings in my turning and to experiment and incorporate a feature that I will be using in my next piece in the Fetish series.

Part of the brief for work produced for group sessions should be to work outside the current comfort zone, to experiment etc. So, with this in mind, I decided to produce a box form with spindle turning attached rather than the usual bowl forms. It is also more conventional in look and finish than the heavily textured/decorated work I have been producing recently.

I used the opportunity to try out some hollow turning tools I’ve had for some time and to use a reference picture of a stone turned column for part of the decoration.

The piece uses black magic principles including a mock spell. The title of the piece is ‘Spell Diffuser’. The overall form is based on a pagoda shape, is 22” high x 3” dia.

Reference pictures were shown with a simple diagram of my proposed making method.

The pagoda is a structure built to hold ancient relics and manuscripts; it is of tall construction to attract lightning strikes. A lightning strike would charge the structure and it is believed it would thereby charge the relics etc and add power to them.

In my piece I proposed the reverse principle that if the spell contained in the box worked its way up the structure to the top, potency would be added during its passage and at the top the lighted incense stick would disperse the spell.

I encountered several making difficulties. Feedback helped to address most of these.

Non-technical feedback was mixed in viewpoints, however, I am happy with the outcome and learning experience both on lathe and in the group.

A website for the Collective is under construction and will appear in due course. It will have information on the Collective, its members, galleries of work in progress, contacts and links.

Some Apologies

Two apologies to make.

Firstly, I have been busy re-working my routing methods and designing a new set up to extend the possibilities - hence the lack of entries lately.

Secondly and more importantly an apology for the comments that have or may have been submitted in the recent past, I know of two that failed to be posted. I recently had my web usage reviewed and was advised to take a different package. This resulted in losing one e-mail address. In the process of deleting the said mailbox I mistakenly clicked the wrong instruction, kept the one I was intending to delete and deleted the rest. I, therefore, lost all the associated mails, messages and links including those to this Blog. One message, from Dan, I have now found on the Blog and this requires a reply that I will make in my next entry.

If anyone has tried to contact me via e-mail lately then you will have discovered that your mails will have been returned. If you click on ‘My Complete Profile’ here, there is an e-mail link that works and will be permanent from now onwards.

On work in general, I still have some pieces to complete in my ongoing Fetish series but I am temporarily moving onto a new series. I have the offer of an exhibition next year and so I intend to work on a new series for this that will hopefully be more saleable for obvious reasons. I will be incorporating more routed surfaces and shapes. Initially, because the simple use of my systems encourages geometric interpretations, I will mostly be using Art Deco as my source of inspiration. The series will probably come under the heading of Echoing Deco and will have numerical identifiers rather than titles.

Today I have to visit the engineers to have some more modifications made. I have calculated that so far I have spent something in excess of £1000 getting things together so I now have to make this mode of working come to fruition. I am sure the two systems combined now offer many opportunities for both surface patterning and texturing as well as sculptural possibilities. It is now up to me to knuckle down and start experimenting in earnest. I may well post the results of some of these efforts in due course if this sounds interesting to visitors here.

I enjoyed my AWGB Seminar experience last weekend, it was great to be able to converse with other turners face to face for a change. This has been lacking for the past three or four years – outspoken views and opinions were not welcomed. My contact ban has still not been lifted but the opportunity to be part of the community for a brief time was a luxury.

I met many interesting turners from both the UK and overseas. When you enter into intelligent dialogue, opinions and ideas can be debated and considered on merit not on a reputation that others are not aware of. Face to face verbal exchanges allow challenges, sharing of ideas and techniques for mutual benefit. I found sources of specialist information, techniques and equipment as well as opinions that would not have been available to me without these conversations.

You will be aware if you have read previous entries here that I submitted some entries into the Instant Gallery as an independent delegate. Given my views I was more than surprised to have the ‘Rites of Passage’ piece selected for the CD and travelling exhibition. It won’t, for personal reasons I don’t wish to expand on, be travelling to other shows. A picture of my part of the display is shown below. The Instant Gallery critique session was interesting both in its scope and self-congratulatory nature. With a wealth of interesting and challenging work on display it was, in my view, a good example of staying within the comfort zone of both the presenters and audience - a kind of reinforcement of a mutual belief system. I have no problem with that except to say it does not do much to advance or encourage new thinking and doing.

I only attended four demonstration sessions Benoit Averley, Al Stirt, Nick Agar and Nick Arnell. I used the time to observe work in the Gallery and mostly to sit outside and reflect on things.

It was a worthwhile and beneficial experience and I am glad I attended and had the opportunity to make new friendships.

Last piece for the AWGB Seminar Gallery

This piece is mixed media 2ft x 3ft 6" having a temporary title of Decorated Bowl for submission purposes. I had not started this work before the paperwork had to be submitted.
A more apt title would be 'Ceremonial Bowl'.
Mostly made from found items. Sorry for the confused background.

Update

Here's the completed piece below 'Rites of Passage'. I have added a bottle, some wheat and some coins to suggest the belief that some cultures have of the spirit needing money and sustenance to assist the passage into the afterlife. The wire containers are made from rusty wire found while beachcombing.

New piece

Sorry for the lack of entries lately, I have been concentrating on my work for a while. Here is a quick pic of my latest piece which is not yet complete. It will have the title "Rites of Passage". Mixed woods and techniques plus carved marble pebble collected from Greece I showed earlier in the Blog.
Overall height 24"

A short explanation of the piece below

A short explanation of the piece may be helpful. I have been studying African works and in particular Fon sculpture for some time. Fon sculpture is based around the vodun cultures in West Africa and the ideas within the culture formed the basis for the more popularly known voodoo rituals and artefacts from Haiti and elsewhere. The popular impression gained from expressions/descriptions of voodoo in literature and films is far from the truth to be found in the original African context of practices which were potentially both threatening or benign. These practices could be seen as the equivalent of Western psychotherapy in the way it was used to explain or challenge things that affected everyday life.
I have taken parts of the philosophy, mixed it with other sources of reference to try to form objects of interest.The symbols on the skull and beans come from Rudolf Koch’s Book of signs. Here primitive symbols are shown that describe various aspects and phases of the cycle of life. Crushed in the pestle and mortar the resulting dust could represent all those experiences in life blended together as memories