What really excites me about art, the art world, the reason that I continue
to make, study, and teach art is because of its ability to communicate things deeply. The wood-working department at IUP really
does have a great sense of community. It's someplace you want to go to work, wich I think is really important as an artist is to have that community
there. That community also in an art setting is one of the things that really fuels that creative spirit.
With that sense of
community you're learning from what everyone around you is doing and there's you know just that sense of camaraderie. There are a couple ways
to look at graduate programs. Our attitude has been to give the graduate students a very dedicated upscale space, access to shops, specifically the large shops, which is more industrially credit-based and
then they have direct access turning studio and they have access to the other bench room. They can conceive and build almost anything. The faculty in the wood-working department are excellent. They're fun to work with, they add to that
sense of community, they want you to be there. They have this
desire to see all of the students succeed so they really put themselves out
there to be available as much as possible. they're just completely available and it's
really helpful as a student to have that sort of access.
So one of the things that makes the wood program at IUP unique is what we call our harvest to use program. We have this amazing machine called the woodmiser which is actually a portable sawmill. What that does is allows us to harvest lumber from trees either come down on campus or from the surrounding area of Pennsylvania. And so students are able to
see that whole process of using wood as a material and going from tree to log to board to furniture.
I think the program has had an impact on me as an artist and also as an individual in that it provides a great sense of community. It's a fun
place to work and it puts the fun back in art making which is a really important part of the whole process. .