latest

Here is a latest piece. Simple hollow form made from high grade birch ply. The material gives many advantages for me over working in natural wood, particularly from a process point of view.

This piece is part of a range of interior items I am producing which eventually will include mixed media but for now I am just getting the simple lines of form and the modern feel of ply in my work and out to the outlets. All of whom to are looking forward to receiving more. Seems they are very popular which is much to my relief. As said not a new material for interior items at all but when you change direction there is a certain amount of concern especially when you put time effort and money into making not knowing if you are going the right way.

Still will have to see how it progresses. Quite exciting really to have a renewed interest using a traditional craft method.

The piece above is not the only direction I want to take my work. Much more sculptural work and forms only using the lathe as a part process are in the design book. But until these have been made, photographed, refined and out in the general public domain I would be committing commercial suicide to disclose the prototypes here and now.

Something I have learnt over the last few years is that I not only have to develop my design skills, be more aware of the commercial viability of products outside of the traditional woodturning sphere, but also that I have to be far more switched on in relation to business matters.

The traditional making methods are very enjoyable and rewarding, and I will still continue to make my traditional work ( which I have no doubt I have said somewhere if not here before), but it is obvious to me that to stay with methods, just because it has been done for time in memorial is also commercial suicide. If not we would all still be writing with the quill.

Not that there is anything wrong with this, but for me it is now over and I have to move on to new methods and designs to run along side my original work. I may in future move totally away from turning as I now know it and to use the lathe more and more as just a part process. I certainly want to use less and less wood. But I am in one of those moods hence why my work and ideas are so eclectic, and tomorrow I may be back to all things traditional. But I have to say that I doubt it as I feel I am again shedding a skin.

My friends will tell you that not so long ago ( a couple of years) I would not be seen dead colouring or altering through texture or adding mixed media to wood. Then I started colouring and texturing and become acutely aware of the enjoyment of letting the mind go and making from within, having a connection with the work more than just making a bowl.

Now this playing and experimenting has started me on this new ,what I will class as ultra modern type work. Again the designs I am producing are well away from the hollow form above, But I still have to keep my feet on the ground and and I enjoy making this sort of item so it will continue.

It also is apparent to me that I am becoming less and less of a conformist to the mass mind set I come across, for me it does nothing but restrict and blinker the creative process. I have tried hard to conform to certain ways of thinking but again it is time to move on to a different place as I find little interest in conforming to ways that are restricting me in my work. hence now becoming more interested in new materials and methods as I find the makers open to my way of thinking in the approach to making.

Hopefully I will have some pictures of the new pieces in the next month or so, but for now you will have to put up with me just expressing my thoughts through my blog.