Popular Woodworking 2005-11 № 151, страница 96

Krenov and Alan Peters to come in and run their own courses. Then came the move to the school's current location and construction of the original workshop building. By 1999, the Center had become nonprofit and two years later it embarked on a $2.4 million fund-raising effort that led to the construction of three new buildings. Shop spaces are comfortable and well-lit. There are separate bench and machine rooms, and the shops are well stocked with professional-quality tools. There's plenty of elbow room for students.

Korn continues to teach a basic woodworking course, but there are others to share the load: two full-time administrators and two full-time instructors. That doesn't include the many outside instructors who come in to teach specific courses. The school runs 29 one- and two-week courses annually that this year will handle about 300 students in all. Topics run all the way from "Really Basic Woodworking," to design, sculptural furniture, veneering, hand-tool skills, turning, finishing and carving. The instructor list is a "Who's Who" of contemporary furniture makers: Jere Osgood, Kevin Rodel, Ted Blachly, Garrett Hack, John Fox, Jacques Vesery, Stephen Gleasner, Chris Pye and many others of the same caliber.

In addition, the school runs three 12-week course s per year for a dozen students at a time plus a single Nine-month Comprehensive program designed for 15 students. The Center also has separate facilities for its Studio Fellowship program, aimed at giving more established furniture makers, turners and carvers

an "encouraging, stimulating environment for the exploration of new work." The Fellows stay anywhere from a month to a year. They have around-the-clock access to the free studio space as well as faculty members who act as mentors. In return, they help maintain the Center and pitch in to teach classes.

Short courses run June through October, so winter months are somewhat quieter. But the overlapping nature of the Center's schedule means there is a diversity of students and work, just about all the time. On this

Above is the bench room for students in the Nine-month Comprehensive program.

day, students who have just started their 12-week program are learning basic skills. But in the next building over, students in the nine-month program are turning out work in a variety of disciplines under the direction of full-time instructor David Upfill-Brown. One student is cutting half-blind dovetails for drawers in a small cabinet while another assembles the interlocking bent-laminated pieces of a small table. Machine rooms offer table saws, shapers, planers and jointers, spindle and disc sanders, mortising machines

- in short, anything they need to turn out top-quality work. Maintaining machines is part of the curriculum.

Korn is no longer in the boarding house business, either. Students rent cottages, apartments and houses in the area while they attend classes. In winter, that's not much of a problem

- Maine's Midcoast region, while beautiful at any time of the year, is not much of a tourist destination when the weather turns cold.

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