I was commissioned to turn a few pieces from some walnut lumber that had been drying in a barn in PA for the last 20 years.  I turned three pieces fairly quickly and glued up a fourth to become a teapot.  I finally finished it this past weekend and the collector was so happy with it, she ordered another one so I’m going back to the lathe.  No complaints here!

I’m scheduled to do a demonstration on my teapots this evening for the Southern Piedmont Woodturner’s Club.  I hope that I can fit the 20 lbs of material in the 10 lb bag of time I have.  I’ve been practicing some of the techniques with a few new pieces and think I might have it down to what feels like five hours.  Just kidding.  Hopefully I can work it all into an hour and a half to two hours.

Come join us at the

Davis Theater
Historic Cabarrus
County Courthouse
65 Union Street South
Concord NC

at 7:00 tonight if you’re interested.

I’ve been out of pocket lately and not in the studio for the last month while I got acclimated to my new IT Manager position.  It’s been an interesting few weeks and I’ve jokingly said that I’ve been looking for the “monsters in the corners”, yet so far, I really haven’t found any big ones.  I hope that means their not there and not that their really good at hiding.  Time will tell.

Last night I met with the South Carolina Watermedia Society in Rock Hill, SC.   We had a nice round table discussion about the options available to promote yourself on the Internet and how you can use them.  Some of the things mentioned were:

• Commercial websites
• Blogs
• Social Networks
• Peer Forums

I enjoyed meeting with the group and hope that I was able to help spur some momentum in them to publish a web site or join a social network and get their work seen on the Internet.  I’d like to thank Jennifer Hamilton for inviting me and encourage you to visit her website as well.  I’m a big fan of her work.

For those of you who read of the unfortunate demise of my day job I’m happy to report that I have found an information technology position at another company and started yesterday.  It’s been a great experience so far and all of the people I’ve met have been friendly.  I’ll still be turning at night but I’m back behind a computer during the day which is the way I like it.

Thanks to all of you who supported, prayed for, and helped in my job search.  I hope that all of you who are still looking and being effected by the recent economic problems have the luck that I have and see relief soon.  You all are in our thoughts and prayers daily.

This past weekend I met with Carla Garrison of Green Rice Gallery in the NoDa section of Charlotte, NC.  She accepted eleven pieces including two new teapots.  Green Rice will have a new artist’s opening on Friday, February 6th featuring “Art of Foreign Lands” by artist Matt Hooker. 

My work will also be displayed and I plan on trying to attend.  If you don’t have anything going on and want to see some great art please join us.

Another friend of mine, Dwight Hartsell, shows his woodturning there as well.  He has a different style to his work and I think we complement each other well in the gallery.  They also have working artist’s studios there as well.

This past Tuesday at 11:30 I was laid off from a job I had stuck with for 6 years 3 months.  Needless to say, it was a shock to the system and I’ve been a little anxious for the past few days about getting my resume out to my network.  Luckily between all my friends, family, co-workers, and cohorts that I’ve done business with over the years, over 200 people knew I was looking within 24 hours.

I’m not out of the woods by a long shot but feel I’ve gotten a good start this week and hopefully I’ll get some sleep over the long weekend and maybe I’ll just block out that I’ll be going back to work finding a job on Tuesday instead of supporting 400 email mailboxes, 85 servers, 25TB of storage, and 100+ people connecting remotely to over 65 applications over the Internet among various other tasks as needed.

So, with that in mind I’m going to start my weekend by taking my guitar over to a friends house, enjoy a few beers, and play some blues.

Next week, I’ll sing the praises of whoever wants to talk to me about getting me back in front of a computer doing the thing I love.  Solving problems and tackling complex projects.

To add a little mirth to the situation, I did visit with the Fort Mill Art Guild Tuesday night and I was  able to tell everyone that, “As of this morning I’m a professional artist!”

I’ve been listening to a lot of John Lee Hooker lately and his song ‘Boogie Chillen’ fits my latest project perfectly.  My oldest daughter had been after me to make her a guitar since the first one I built. Well, I found one of those tuits (the round kind) tonight and got started.  This is a work in progress and when I finish it, I’ll see about posting a video of her playing it.  This should be good.

It has a cherry face, walnut back and neck, and a purpleheart fret board. I probably won’t fret it but figured it would help not have such a high action. The hole is for the bridge and I’ll probably put a piezo pickup in it just for fun.  Just the right size for a five year old.  Two strings should keep her busy for a while.

These guitars have been a lot of fun and I’ve found a good resource for information on building similar home made instruments at Cigar Box Nation. They build everything from cigar box guitars to diddley bows and have instructions and information on making them as primitive or as fancy as you want. If you’re interested in making your own, you should check them out.

If you haven’t ever listened to any John Lee Hooker and you even vaguely like the blues, I suggest you check him out too. I recently downloaded an album off iTunes of his work for $9.99 with 48 songs on it. Probably the best money I’ve spent in a while.

With the addition of a piezo pickup, my latest guitar rocks with the help of an new Craigslist supplied amp.  The pickup isn’t going to win any awards for frequency response and clean sounds, but hey, I put it together with some instructions from the Internet and it adds to the dirty blues sound of the three string instrument.  The guitar has a cherry neck and a rosewood body with ebony nut, bridge and inlays in the neck.  Here is a sample of it in action.  Please forgive my poor playing ability.

Bowl Guitar with Piezo Pickup

The piezo is  actually attached to a plug that fits in a hole in the face of the guitar.  The leads are then attached to the 1/4″ audio jack which was epoxied into the bowl.  The carved plug acts as a floating bridge and allows the vibrations to be picked up.  This was a fairly easy way to integrate the electronics and it makes it easy to do repairs if there is a problem.  Just remove the strings and pull the plug.

With this guitar, I also used a new technique to make the neck.  I glued two 2 x 2 pieces of cherry together with a sheet of brown paper between them and used masking tape to reinforce the glue up.  I then waited about 30 minutes and put the glue up between centers.  I left one end square and turned the rest round giving me two guitar necks. After turning, I separated the two halves and  jointed the face of the neck to remove the glue and paper.  To finalize the neck, I used a bandsaw to cut the square section at an angle and shape the area for the tuning machines.

After getting the guitar together, I put a string on it and found the scale using a slide.  I marked each note on the neck and went back to the shop to inlay a piece of ebony to mark them.

Overall, it’s been a great project with a huge reward at the end.   I’m no John Lee Hooker, but I’m still trying to learn to play.  It’s been a really fun process trying new things with each guitar.

2008 has been a good year for me and my art and I appreciate everyone’s help and support.  Here are just a few things that I’m thankful for this year.

1.  In February, I was featured on a local television show called Face to Face with Andrea Sebastayn.  I appreciate Andrea’s help and allowing me to share my art with the community.
2.  I did demonstrations for the Charlotte Woodturner’s Club, the Southern Piedmont Woodturner’s Club and the Waxhaw Woodturner’s Club.  Southern Piedmont has asked me to come back in April of 2009 and I’m looking forward to visiting with them again.  Thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk about my work with my peers.  It helps my process a lot.
3. I was able to establish a relationship with a corporate client who is sending some of my pieces to Asia for gifts to executives and engineers there.  Pretty exciting to think one of my pieces might be sitting on a Toyota executives desk somewhere.  (If you’re reading this, send me a picture please!)
4. I have what I consider to be serious collectors and I’m very appreciative of their enjoyment of my work.
5. I’ve worked with Bob Doster’s Backstreet Gallery in Lancaster and greatly appreciated he and his wife’s support throughout much of the year.  Hopefully we can cross paths again.
6. I’ve worked with The Grapevine Wine Bar and appreciate their commitment to carrying my bottle stoppers.  It’s been great to have such a nice venue supporting my work.
7. I’ve worked with BacInTyme Coffee Cafe and Georgia Ehrenberg to promote and display my work as well.  She’s doing a wonderful job with local artists and I look forward to continuing that relationship as well.
8. I redesigned my website to be database driven and can generate all kinds of inventory reports making it a lot easier to update.  Thanks to me, I’m finally getting a little organized.
9. I established a mailing list.  (If you want to be added, let me know)  Thanks to all of you that haven’t put me in your “This is spam” list.
10. On October 10th, 2008 one of my teapots was featured on the World of Woodturners site in the Picture Of The Day section.  My first on this site which features some of the top turners in the world.  Thanks Petteri Leppikallio for that honor.
11. On October 23rd, 2008 one of my teapots was featured on the American Association of Woodturner’s site  in the Picture Of The Day Section.  My second POTD from that site.  Thanks goes to Kurt Bird for that selection.
12. I established a Facebook fan page.  Look for me there too.
13. I made two great trades with other artisans this year and from their responses, they feel like they got the better end of the deal.  I appreciate them saying that, but honestly, I feel like I was the lucky one.   Thank you for appreciating my work and let me know if I can help you in the coming year.

So, 2008 may not have provided my first million from sales but it’s really been a great year overall.  Thanks again to all my collectors, family, and friends for supporting my work.  I hope you all have a great new year and hope that I will see you soon.  Happy New Year!

It’s a great thing to be able to meet and talk to other artists and crafts people.  Whether it’s through shows, friends, Internet forums, this web site or chance it’s a lot of fun to learn about what they’re doing and develop relationships simply because you both have a passion and express it through your work.  I recently met a couple of artists and I really liked their work.  One was at the Winter Wonderland Craft Show this year and the other I met through a Facebook friend.

Treva, who was at the craft show, is a talented photographer whose work captures a lot of the area I live in in a special light.  Looking at her work, I see a lot of things that I’ve seen before around town but never put two and two together to take a photograph.  She has a great eye and when you talk to her, you can tell she is really passionate about her work.  What’s really cool is, she liked my work too and we were able to work out a trade for one of my pieces for one of her pictures.  She chose a screw top box from dogwood and blackwood while I chose a picture of fall leaves that had been ever so slightly processed to produce amazing yellows and purples and blue hues.  It’s really a cool picture.

Annie Mohaupt makes shoes. Not just any shoes though. Amazing cherry wedges and bent ply heels. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not into wearing woman’s shoes but my wife is and Annie’s are high fashion with handmade street cred.  Like Treva, we worked out a deal where my wife got a fancy pair of shoes for Christmas and Annie got one of my teapots.  Needless to say, Jenny was very excited about her Christmas present from me this year.

Thanks to both of you for your work and I hope you enjoy mine.  Hopefully we can cross path’s again and help each other in the future.