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INTRODUCTION

Woodturning in the 21st Century

During the 1960s and 1970s, turned wooden bowls first came to be considered as objects of contemplation rather than simply of function. An art-like market gradually developed among collectors who considered such bowls too beautiful to use. Turners of vision started to ignore tradition, and to make pieces that broke many of the old “rules” of the craft. It was a quiet revolution, but a strangely disconnected one, because many participants had no idea what the others were doing. If anyone read about woodturning, it would have been in books emphasizing the trade values of techniques, not of innovative shapes or aesthetics.

In 1976, the American writer Dona Z. Meilach first documented the work for what it was—the beginning of a new art movement. In her book, Creating Small Wood Objects as Functional Sculpture, Meilach assembled much previously scattered history and put it into a larger context. She was probably the first person to describe turning as “sculptural” and to refer to turners as “artists.” Meilach also introduced people who would shape the new field such as Melvin Lindquist, Bob Stocksdale, and Stephen Hogbin. Meilach’s work alerted many artists to the fact that there were others like them, and also inspired many newcomers to join the movement.

During the 1970s and into the 1980s, the then-new Fine Woodworking magazine published a series of articles that reached an enormous audience around the world and changed the future of turning forever. The series included stories on turning delicate bowls of exotic timber by Bob Stocksdale; heavily spalted wood, previously unheard of, by Mark Lindquist; green turning, a technique practiced by turners for hundreds of years, by Alan Stirt; inlaid wood with hi-tech finishes by Giles Gilson, and, most significant of all, a 1979 article by David Ellsworth on hollow turning. Ellsworth laid down his challenge to the turning world: “Bowl turning is one of the oldest crafts. It is also among the least developed as a contemporary art form.” Ellsworth was good at explaining the technical aspects of his work—lathe specifications, speed, tools—but he also introduced language and a philosophy that had never before been heard in relation to turning: “The concentration involves all senses equally, and the center of focus is transferred to the tip of the tool.” It was heady stuff, just right for the times, and it hit the mark in a culture ready for rule-breakers.

Ron Fleming, Yama Yuri, 2006. Basswood, acrylics; 36" high × 17" diameter. Fleming created the turned vase as a vehicle for the painted lilies, which are life-size. He says, “I had to reinvent the air-brush process to be able to apply frisket on a curved surface. There’s more than 400 hours in it.”

In 1980, Dale Nish of Provo, Utah, published the milestone book Artistic Woodturning. Nish showed foresight when he put the word “artistic” on the cover and he introduced ideas that profoundly influenced turners around the world. Nish spoke of paying “tribute to nature’s designs,” and of making the most of faults and damage in wood. Nish was one of the first to chronicle the changing ways turners were using wood, and their new approaches to displaying its beauty.

A New Collector

The new work attracted a new kind of collector, people who not only fell in love with the lure of wood, but also believed the leading woodturners could become the new art stars. It was not to be the case. If the new turning heroes became famous, it was not in the broader art field, but among the legion of aspiring turners with lathes in their garages who sought to create similar work. The amateur artisans formed a new market for tools and hardware, and for a time each new turning idea generated a new line of equipment. From sophisticated hollowing systems to ever-larger lathes, vast numbers of tools were manufactured and sold to the burgeoning amateur market. As a result, a thin and difficult-to-navigate line developed between amateurs who were able to create technically proficient work, largely by imitating or taking classes from their heroes, and those who had a distinctly original aesthetic vision that propelled the field forward.

Very early on, a small group of woodturners emerged as the collectible masters. The group included James Prestini, Bob Stocksdale, Melvin and Mark Lindquist, Rude Osolnik, and Ed Moulthrop. As the field expanded during the1980s and 1990s, new artists entered the gallery system, among them such innovators as Todd Hoyer, Stoney Lamar, Michael Peterson, Giles Gilson, John Jordan, Mike Scott, and Michelle Holzapfel. The infusion created challenges for new collectors and curators, who had to navigate a scene where accomplished artists exhibited alongside emergent novices. The early success of the true innovators suggested originality was the key to sales, so the new generation began to create ever more unusual and technically complex work. At the same time, some who had already made their mark by creating original work seemed condemned to repeat their ideas incessantly, to satisfy the desire of collectors to own a signature piece.

Round No More

Woodturning is unlike other traditional woodcrafts. In carving, furniture making, and carpentry, one takes pains to hold the wood still so it can be worked by moving tools. In woodturning, the lathe rotates the wood itself against a hand-guided tool. The inversion has two valuable consequences: much turned work can be completed right on the lathe with no additional processing, and woodturning offers a very quick path from fallen tree to finished object. It also brings a limitation formerly seen as inviolate: turned work is round.

Much of the wood art in this book inverts those truisms: the lathe is merely the beginning, with additional off-lathe processing to come. It is not at all quick, and it no longer has to be round.

Most of the early innovators made their work entirely on the lathe and the artists in the book generally started out doing the same. Most of them spent many years mastering the traditional skills of turning before feeling the need to add other techniques. Many don’t use the lathe nearly as much now, and some struggle with whether they are “turners” at all. A piece of wood might spend a very brief time on the lathe, followed by months of reworking, sometimes removing or concealing any evidence it was initially turned. The trend in turned wood art now is to carve, burn, paint, recut, and rework pieces.

Once woodturning was valued for how quickly and inexpensively it could be done, but now artists boast of how many months they spend reworking a piece after turning it. However, many say their work is still “defined by the lathe” and most admit to a deep-seated love of the very ancient craft of turning. It is true that even when a piece has been reworked extensively, its beginnings as a round and symmetrical shape still will show through—its lines are too powerful to entirely disguise. The artists’ loyalty to the lathe may seem surprising, however, because it is the work they do after turning that makes their work distinctly their own.

The beauty of wood is what attracts many artists in the first place, and much early work celebrates it. It is about the wood’s appearance, smell, grain, texture, and links with the natural world. In the early days, a clever use of wood grain was enough to claim artistry. Even now, when artists may obscure the wood by texturing, burning, and painting, it still has appeal in its warmth, heft, and vitality.

For many of the artists in this book, their immediate environment is another important part of who they are and what they create, and pursuing a solitary craft with an uncertain income is their method for being able to live in places they love.

Astonishing New Techniques

For a long time, many who were promoting wood art liked to compare it to ceramics and art glass. They were looking for a vocabulary to help build credibility in the top-end market. In reality, contemporary wood art uses techniques as exciting as anything being done in other fields. If anyone doubts turned wood art is now as much about carving, texturing, sanding, and painting, they only have to look at the astonishing work represented in these pages.

While turned wood art has its roots in utility, today’s artists often encounter a prejudice against function. Galleries, collectors, and museum curators tend to frown upon production work and functional bowls, suggesting those woodturners will not be accepted as “serious artists.” However, many woodturners continue to produce functional multiples as a means of supporting their families and because they simply enjoy the work.

From ancient and humble beginnings, woodturning has been transformed into an art form for the twenty-first century. As both wood and fine craftsmanship become more precious in a machine-made world, the art not only reminds us of a simpler past, but it also shows nothing is fixed and old skills can evolve unexpectedly. The artists in this book acknowledge their predecessors, both ancient and more recent. In turn, we hope the work in these pages will inspire others to grow in new directions.

—TERRY MARTIN, BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA, AND KEVIN WALLACE, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA