2007 AAW Symposium - Part 4

Sunday, July 1, 2007.

Alas, all good things must come to an end and so the last day of the symposium arrived. The second rotation on Sunday is reserved for the instant gallery critique, which, this year, was lead by Michael Brolly and Stephen Hogbin.

Pieces from the instant gallery were brought in and projected onto a large screen so the audience could see the turning as it was discussed.



Gerrit Van Ness' work was up first and the discussion was fun. Michael and Stephen asked if the "maker" was in the room and Gerrit was there in the back. He added a bit of insight on his thoughts in making his interesting sculptural pieces.







Malcolm Tibbett's sculpture was also discussed. That's Malcolm sitting right in front of me.

You can scroll down and read the text that goes along with this interesting sculpture from one of my posts of the instant gallery.






That's David Nittmann commenting on his work that was being discussed.












My "Leaf Saturation" bowl was also part of the instant gallery critique. I think they liked my title for the work.







The final POP presentation was "A Critic's Perspective." This was a panel discussion led by David Ellsworth and assisted by J. Paul Fennell and Jacques Vesery.






One last walk through the trade show to go pick up my wood purchase. Here's Stuart Batty having fun at the lathe.











Stuart always draws a big crowd and he's a fun one to watch.








Steve and Meghan came to the convention center by the local train system and ended up having a good time with the big pendulum clock.

Meghan watched Steve and Dennis Laidler take photos of the foucalt pendulum hanging from the ceiling.






That sounded like a good idea to Meghan, so she joined the local doofi.










Sorry, Meghan - "we're outta here."













This was the first time I've been at an AAW symposium with any of my family along.

It was a good one and I'm looking forward to many more in the future.

I hope you enjoyed the virtual tour of the AAW symposium

2007 AAW Symposium - Part 3

Saturday, June 30, 2007.

Of all the demonstrators at the symposium I most wanted to sit through one of Alain Mailland's rotations. His work is so interesting and he's such a creative genius that one can't help but learn a lot by watching him work.

I caught several glimpses of his rotations, but sat through the one where he showed images of his work and shop. That was fantastic! I especially enjoyed watching the progression of his work from one design to another.





There were some late entries to the instant gallery and some work I had missed the previous day, so here are some more pictures from the gallery. This sculptural piece is by Nick Agar.















Dennis' Laidler's suspended vessel. I might have posted a pic of this already. . .











Lidded segmented vessels by Mark Kauder.











More of Alain Mailland's sculptures.











no comment. . .

















Another look at the trade show.










A quick hello to Jimmy.











Back to the instant gallery.


Close-up of one of Sharon Doughtie's bowls. I like how she works the Norfolk Island pine branching pattern into her Celtic weave designs.








This one moves beyond the basic bowl form. I like the motion in this piece.









Ken Rodgers made these pierced mask forms.












A set of vessels by Bob Dool (ok, so I do have some brown and round pics to show on my blog).










This is round, but not brown. Steve Worcester made a vessel from shredded credit cards in epoxy. That's good recycling for you.













The Youth Turning program was in full swing on Saturday. Bonnie Klein took the morning sessions and Nick Cook the afternoon. The program is a huge success. Congratulations to Bonnie and Nick, and all the volunteers who make this work.



Saturday night is when the AAW banquet and auction take place. Binh Pho gave an abbreviated tribute to Frank Sudol as the banquet was in full swing. It was really hard to hear what was happening over the sound of cutlery on plates and the ongoing conversations amongst 1500 attendees.

It was a nice gesture by Binh, though.



The AAW auction is an important component of the Saturday night banquet. With a room of 1500 - 2400 people, running an auction efficiently is a big challenge. For the past several years John Hill has been our auctioneer. This year John worked the first half and the second half was turned over to a professional company of auctioneers.

There were mixed reviews of this. Some attendees thought it was pretty efficient while others complained that the company didn't know enough about the work being auctioned.

My opinion is that John really knows how to auction the work from woodturners, but that the spotters in the pro company were probably better at keeping the auction moving along than what has happened in the past with volunteer spotters. It will be interesting to see what happens next year.


In past years the announcing of each piece has been done by Phil Brennion (past president and double term board member). Phil wasn't able to attend this year's symposium so announcing duty was passed onto Jacques Vesery, who promptly recruited helpers (Art Liestman, Christian Burchard, and yours truly).








Malcolm Tibbetts also was helping with the auction as a current AAW board member.

"You guys are having way too much fun!"















Christian says, "really?"










Ok, so we'll get serious. . .












"Not a chance," said Jacques.

We took turns doing the announcing, which worked out pretty well. It was sometimes a challenge to figure out how to pronounce names of turners who we didn't personally know.











These contributions are from familiar faces - Steve Sinner on the left and Don Derry's contribution on the right.









I think this Koa vessel was from David Ellsworth, but I might be misremembering.











A donation by Bill Tilson.

















Art Liestman's donation.












John Hill is hard at work . . .
















while some of us are goofing off.










Bill Luce's contribution to the auction.












I couldn't resist photographing this angle of Gerritt Van Ness' donation.

















This was the donation that brougt in $30,000 - a collaboration between the late Frank Sudol and Binh Pho.














The collaboration between Bonnie Klein and Jacques Vesery brought in a respectable $20,000.


















"Yes, I'm allowed to touch it. I made it!"















This one needed to be shown properly. I can't remember the maker, but the title was "George Bush's gift to the American people."

Those of us backstage had a hard time not laughing about Jacques' rendition of Vanna White, especially given the visual innuendo. Enough said.









I think this was Alain Mailland's piece, but I can't remember the details more than a month out from the symposium.

Anyway, the auction was a huge success with more than $100,000 raised for the educational opportunity grant program.

2007 AAW Symposium - Part 2d

Hurray! This is the final post for the first day of the 2007 AAW Symposium in Portland, Oregon.





I stopped in for a few minutes of several demonstrations after lunch on Friday. Here's Jimmy Clewes.


















Trent Bosch - He's mounted a hollow form onto his carving adapter.







This was a POP presentation by Stephen Hogbin and Mark Sfirri. It was a review of Stephen's work. If you'll scroll down the page you'll see some of the work by Stephen Hogbin that was in the exhibit celebrating the POP Fellowship awards.







Stephen's approach to his work is very thoughtful and he has some of the most interesting sculptural elements of any contemporary artist working in wood.










Another view of the trade show. There were a lot of vendors selling wood, lathes, equipment and supplies.









Demonstrations by fantastic turners are all over the trade show. Here's Mike Mahoney turning small hollow forms.









Back to the instant gallery now.

This interesting sculpture is by Ben Carpenter. I met Ben while in Hawaii last March. He joined several of us to "run the rock" with Mike Lee.

Ben has an interesting imagination. . .

Most of his work is off the lathe, and recently, he's not been putting much turning into his sculptures. He did bring work to the instant gallery that featured lathe-turned elements, though.






The use of beautifully figured wood and organic elements make Ben's work a delight to behold.










The theme revolves around imaginary biomorphs. I sometimes wonder what kind of dreams (maybe they're hallucinations?) Ben has to think up some of these creatures.









Steve Sinner explaining his surface techniques. Looking over his shoulder on the left is Avelino Samuel.











Chapter collaboration by the Wine Country Woodturners














Big Island Woodturners made this vessel. You can see the beginning of this large hollowform on one of my posts about my visit to the Big Island Woodturners.











The Glendale Woodturners made this spaceport.









This one was pretty neat, from a botanist's perspective. A wooden lei by the Honolulu Woodturners.









Another stroll though the trade show. I bought a lot of exotic wood on this trip. I'm now working on some of my "hidden world" series with interesting woods rather than my usual bland selections.









I introduced John Wessels to Bill Moore, figuring the two of them had that wood and metal thing in common. John is showing Bill some images of his recent work where he's added pewter to his turnings.












L to R: Dennis Laidler, John Wessels, Bill Moore.








From these four posts you must have the feeling that Friday was a very long day. Well, it flew by and ended with a gathering of WoWies (World of Woodturners members) for a nice dinner.

Dave Ramer (on left) did the organizing for this event and Jamie Donaldson (on right) helped to do the announcing.











You know a party is never complete until Kelly Dunn steps into the limelight.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, may I have your attention, please? Some lucky winner is going to go home with a Kelly Dunn original. . ."










He was referring to the turning exchange. We had some wonderful things on the exchange table.

A big thank you to Dave Ramer for his efforts on bringing a bunch of us together for dinner.