| All art is inspired by our past experiences, present environment, and future expectations. As an engineer, my experiences were driven by participating in the electronics development that happened in Silicon Valley from the late ‘70’s through 2000. Since 2000, I’ve been turning full time. My turnings fall into two categories, segmented and art from the Urban Forest.
My segmented work provides an opportunity to express engineering design into pieces of wood art. This work requires very detailed planning and drawing, extremely accurate woodwork skills, and woodturning skills. The time required to produce these pieces can be months. I am pioneering a form of segmentation which I refer to as Missing Segment. These pieces are very airy and delicate, utilizing negative space to draw your eye and entertain your mind. Vessels from the Urban Forest provide me with an opportunity to merge the precision and challenges of engineering with the opportunity to utilize the variability and unpredictability of nature. Many of these turnings start as one thing, but speak to me to become something else as they develop. I gather a great deal of personal satisfaction from these pieces as it is a green endeavor. While the Urban forest is not the most cost effective method of obtaining wood, it does provide me with a great deal of satisfaction providing wood that would at worst become land fill, and at best becoming firewood an opportunity to have a second life, sharing its beauty with us. I am an active member of the West Bay Area Woodturners based in San Mateo, California as well as a member of the American Association of Woodturners, AAW. At our local club contest, my pieces have received People’s Choice in 2004, 2007, and 2008, as well as Best of Show in 2005 and 2007. My work has been on the front cover of the AAW magazine as well as included in More Woodworking. I am also a member of WoW, World of Woodturners. It is an members only resource for turners world wide In 2008 I offered some of my work to the public at the Saratoga Rotary Art Show, roughly 1 mile from home. I enjoyed meeting and talking with all the attendees that stopped by and have continued to participate in the show since then. I’m lucky that I do not need to do this for a living, or I’d be pretty thin by now! As they say “How do you make a small fortune in woodturning? Start with a large fortune!” None the less, it is something I enjoy. I’ve not tried galleries, as my goal is not to turn this into a full time job. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or interest in purchasing my work. Remember: You can learn something from everyone. Sometimes it is what to do, sometimes it is what not to do.
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