May 31, 2013 - AFTER THE SHOW

My wood turning show “Circular And Beyond” at the Craig Gallery ended on Sunday, May 26. The items included in the show were on display for almost four weeks. And now with the help of Peter Goforth and Don Moore we packed up the show and brought the items on display back to Upper Kingsburg.

The show was clearly a significant success. The opening of the show was well attended with around one hundred individuals in attendance. Two weeks after the opening, during the Artist’s talk, some thirty people came to hear the talk and a stream of visitors both before and after the talk brought the total attendance on that day to over 110 people. All together close to six hundred people came to see the show during the 26 days of its running.

The show was listed with an accompanying photograph in the Halifax Chronicle Herald as well as in the VANS magazine. The response of the people visiting the show was nothing less than extremely enthusiastic. More than fifty people took the trouble to write comments in the Guest Book and these comments were decidedly heart warming.

Several items were sold and the gallery director took the trouble to tell me that in a meeting of the Gallery’s staff a consensus evolved whereby my show was considered to be one of the best shows at the Craig gallery ever.

Needless to say, this outcome was very encouraging and motivating for me which already resulted in a burst of energy that seems to be leading to new experimentation and search of original approaches and styles of turning.

April 30, 2013 - CIRCULAR AND BEYOND

About two years ago I was invited to have an exhibition of my wood turning at the Craig Gallery, at Alderney Landing, in Dartmouth, N.S.

This show which was in the planning phases for so long will now open on May 1st and stay open for one month. I plan to display 30 pieces of work created during the past two years, that is, during the planning phase of the exhibition.

What is characteristic about the items to be displayed is that they do not reflect any common theme or style. Instead, they represent a wide variety of turnings of different styles, techniques and modes of decoration. Thus, aside from the basic lathe produced turnings, the pieces in this exhibition are also treated with piercing, burning, inlay and other forms of decoration.

In a sense these works display the evolution of my wood turning from its beginning, some 12 years ago, when most of the turned pieces were simple, basic functional pieces. Quite quickly, I discovered that as much as I liked the lathe work, I found the repetitiveness inherent in the functional approach, rather boring. Gradually I began to depart from this style of work. Instead I started to add various non-round structural elements as well as decorative elements, most of which were actually not made of wood. In other words, over the past several years the portion of turned work in the completed piece decreased progressively. Currently, I would estimate the amount of actual turning in the pieces presented in the show as no more than 40-50%.

To my great surprise I discovered coincidentally that evolution of my work was not unique in any way. It is possible that currently, the majority of turned work produced only marginally relies exclusively on turning alone. Indeed, more and more of the professional turners are increasingly referring to themselves and their work as Wood Art produced by wood artists.

In the coming while I plan to post in the website photos of all the pieces that were displayed in the exhibition. This will enable the readers to judge whether this departure from basic turning into wood-art has merit.