it's the wood itself in the work itself
it's always out there and I always think about it really good to be right in the
moment and not have to worry about other things
just focus on what you're doing at the time and time seems to fly away I see a
tree or a piece of wood that's been cut down oh that make a nice box or that
make a great bowl you have to look for further grain in the wood there's
different colors different variations in the grains my name is Thomas Irven and I'm a wood
artist 7th or 8th grade or ninth grade and we had a woods in metals class and I
got to turn a clock I always remembered it and it wasn't till after I was
working on my master's degree that I came back to it so just kind of latent back
there but it popped out growing up in Indiana and we had a lot of acorn trees
so that kind of started me doing boxes and acorns and it's grown from there
wood turning is typically done on the lathe it's kind of like a potter's wheel
only turned sideways so the the wood spins on a machine and then you use
sharp tools to kind of carve it out sometimes the wood just will tell you
what it wants to be and I'll just look at it over a period
of time and then eventually it's like that little piece of wood kind of
magically says that's what I want to be a bowl is basically a bead in a cove you
have a bead underneath if you turn it over you'd have a round bottom that
that's a bead if you turn the other way where the the hollow is the hollow is a
Cove there's really not much in woodturning
that is other than a bead in a Cove and a and a break or a transition that's
basically all there is an eternity so if you can master doing that it's not
too hard to do whatever you want to in practice it's it's a little bit
harder than it sounds woodturners like what carpenters will
just kind of toss aside when you cut a green tree down you have these these
crotch pieces will go cut those off and they'll kind of throw them in a pile and
not use them as they don't make good straight lumber Woodturner's love that
emotion comes into it a lot if I'm angry about something else it's going to show
up in the work all the emotions kind of come into play can be a wonderful thing there's a piece
in the back of the shop here that I I made after my father's death and so I
know that's that part of my life that period of time
Wood is a it's a living object and sometimes you think it's still alive
when it's flying off the lathe that you you know but their bark inclusions and
things that you can't see sometimes so you have to be very careful on what's in
there and just aware of what you're doing I hope more people look at
woodworking as art but I'll just keep making what I make and hopefully they
like it
