Woodworker's Journal 2006-30-5, страница 15

Jennifer Shirley is a part-time turner and a full-time news program director. Turning, she points out, can provide balance to the stress of a full-time job. Her advice? "Woodturning is easy to do, but hard to do well. Invest in education."

Myra Perrin describes herself as a "bits and pieces" artist who enjoys experimenting with new processes and techniques. That long spindle, for instance, is "Comp Wood," solid ash infused with water under high pressure.

The platter she made is an excellent example of how Jennifer is beginning to develop her own style of embellishing turned objects. Her first attempts were tentative, but now she boldly covers an entire turned object, combining carving, painting, texturing, and wood burning.

Jennifer turned the back of her platter first, took it off the lathe, textured the back with a needle scaler, then added black gesso to create accent areas. She flipped the platter around and reattached it to the lathe using a chuck. Then she turned the front of the platter and left an elevated section in the middle.

While on the lathe, Jennifer painted black gesso for accents on the front. Next, she used the indexing on her lathe to lay out the spacing for the carved arches. At her workbench, she carved the shape of the rim with a power carver and carved the inner details with a reciprocating carver. Jennifer used a wood burner with a variety of pen tips to texture the detail on the rim and inner design. The circles she burned with a piece of copper pipe, heated with a torch. The small metal accents are brass BBs, glued into divots.

Jennifer's advice: woodturning is relatively easy to do, but difficult to do well, so invest in some type of education — it's a step in the right direction.

Artist: Myra Perrin

Myra Perrin describes herself as "an artist who happens to work with wood." She is a recent graduate of Herron School of Art, where she earned a BFA in furniture design. Currently, she is working at an art gallery in the Broad Ripple area of Indianapolis — she loves being surrounded by other people's work.

Myra's Delta lathe is located in her ground-level basement garage, part of an arsenal of woodworking tools and machinery which make up her studio. The lathe has

an inboard capacity of 10" — not large enough for this chunk of wood, so she headed for my shop. The turning part of Myra's project was straightforward and easy: turn a disc to use as the basis for a wall hanging. The time she spent turning was minimal compared to the painting and assembling. Myra left the disc rough-turned and used that textured surface for the paint which would be added later.

Myra is a true a "bits and pieces" artist who enjoys experimenting with new processes and techniques. The wood she used for the long spindles that loop around her disc are an example of her interest in combining different elements and trying new materials. It's called Comp Wood, and she purchased it from a company called Fluted Beams (www.flntedbeams.com). It's solid ash, which has been infused with water under high pressure and comes wrapped in plastic. Myra unwraps a piece, rips it on her bandsaw, then bends it into various shapes, using clamps to hold it in place. After about twenty-four hours the wood can be undamped, and it retains the bent shape.

After Myra painted the bent forms, she attached them to the disc, using wood pegs. They look like pieces of metal, once again a testimony to Myra's ability to experiment with materials and techniques. To achieve that look, she used an acrylic paint that contained graphite, burnishing between coats. For the disc, she used Golden Acrylics paint, charcoal stick and graphite, drawing on the disc during the painting process. The disc also has the look of metal, which compliments the long bent forms.

Myra's advice for beginning turners is to constantly experiment — it's the only way to build skills and design sense. Picasso said, "inspiration exists, but it has to find us working," so turn, turn, turn.

Betty Scarpino is a woodturner who learned her craft from workshops, classes, and self-education. Her web site, www.bettyscarpino.com has recently been redesigned.

Woodworker's Journal October 2006

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