Mike Mahoney

http://bowlmakerinc.com

Artist Profile

Mike has been a professional woodturner since 1992. He specializes in utilitarian items that he wholesales to American Crafts galleries across the U.S. Mike acquires all his material from local urban sources (tree trimmers and city landfills). Mike has also taught his craft at woodturning symposiums in seven countries. Mike has diversified by creating instructional DVDs and a line of woodworking finishes with a walnut oil base.

Artist Statement

“I am passionate about my craft and the American Craft movement.  I am dedicated to producing quality craft and educating the public about woodturning.  My wood comes from urban sources (tree trimmers and local cities). I produce all my work on the lathe without any emblellishments after the fact, creating a very traditional feel with contemporary ideas.  I want my work to be attractive as well as useful. For my work to be admired is one thing, but for my work to be used fulfills my purpose as a craftsman.”

Al Stirt
http://www.alstirt.com

Artist Profile

Al Stirt has been a professional woodturner for more than 40 years. His work is included in numerous public and private collections, including the Smithsonian, the White House the Museum of Art and Design, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. He has demonstrated and taught about woodturning & design in Australia, England, Ireland, New Zealand and Canada as well as throughout the U.S. In additional to his functional bowls and platters, for the last 25 years he has been making ceremonial objects to try to address emotional & spiritual needs.

Derek Weidman
http://weidmanwoodsculpture.com/

Artist Profile

Derek is dedicated to exploring lathe-based sculpture. His approach involves multi-axis turning as the foundation of his work. By using the unique shaping processes of turning, Derek has created a descriptive visual language that only the lathe can speak. This carving process creates novel representations of a wide range of subjects, from those based on human anatomy to various animal forms. Derek works from a basic question, “What would this look like if rendered through the lens of a wood lathe?,”” and even with the most rigorous naturalism, an honest abstraction takes place, and for each new subject that question gets answered. So from human heads to rhinos, mandrills to birds, each idea being captured in a way it has not been expressed before.

“Here is an analogy: say if I were to draw a baboon, describing its features with a great deal of realism with my right hand would be relatively simple, but now if I were to draw a baboon with my left hand, some sacrifices would be made due to the limitations my left hand has. I would describe or capture the essence of the baboon differently with each hand. Now if we take this analogy one step further, say if I were to try and ‘draw’ a baboon with the lathe, the results would be much different, due to how the lathe works

Eric Lofstrom
http://www.ericlofstrom.com

Artist Profile

Elementary teacher by day and woodturner by night, Eric Lofstrom is a dynamic and passionate teacher. He empowers others with knowledge and understanding coupled with skill and tool control to expand their woodturning experiences. With a diverse repertoire of woodturning instruction, Eric’s specialties include facegrain and endgrain bowls, fitted lid boxes and containers, hollow forms, multi-axis sculptural pieces and surface embellishments.
As a professional woodturning demonstrator and instructor since 2006, Eric is increasingly conscious of the importance tool control plays in creating pieces. Eric’s unique expertise in biomechanics and understanding of tool design permeates his teaching with a constant focus on technique. As a seasoned teacher, Eric communicates complex concepts in easily understood language. Eric believes it is important to understand the “why” and “how” of technique, not just the “what”. As a passionate teacher and woodturner, Eric’s exuberance will inspire your world of woodturning with confidence to develop your artistic voice!
Eric is well known throughout the Pacific Northwest as a premier teacher of woodturning skills and creator of wood art. His demonstrations and hands-on classes are highly acclaimed by AAW clubs, woodworking stores and symposiums; Creativity in Woodturning Symposium in Washington State (2008 and 2009), Oregon Woodturning Symposium (2015), and Utah Woodturning Symposium (2015).

Cindy Drozda
http://www.cindydrozda.com/

Artist Profile

Cindy Drozda, Boulder Colorado, has worked wood professionally since her first “real” job at age 19, where she taught herself to work with wood. The need to make a pair of chairs brought her to woodturning, but it was the pictures of bowls, vessels, and boxes in the back of Dale Nish’s book that really got her hooked. Before settling on woodturning as a career Cindy worked as a cabinet maker, rebuilt airplanes, machined metal, and made hang gliding equipment.

Today, her pieces are exhibited at the finest art shows and galleries. Her elegant lidded vessels and boxes with delicate finials bring a contemporary flair to classic forms. A jewel hidden under the lid symbolizes the treasure that life reveals when we make the effort to look deeper. Her trademarks are precise techniques, fine details, and pleasing forms. Cindy will coach you to new levels of excellence in your woodturning!

Mark Sfirri

Artist Profile

Mark Sfirri studied furniture design under Tage Frid at Rhode Island School of Design, from which he received a BFA and MFA. He began exploring lathe turned forms, even some multi-axis turned forms in the mid-1970s, although he explored multi-axis spindle turning more seriously in the early 1990s and has continued to do so ever since.

Sfirri has run the Fine Woodworking Program at Bucks County Community College in Newtown, Pennsylvania since 1981. He has received two national awards: the “Distinguished Educator Award” in 2010 from the Renwick Alliance of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institutions and, in 2012, a “Lifetime Achievement Award” by the Collectors of Wood Art.

Kurt Hertzog
http://kurthertzog.com/

Artist Profile

A professional woodturner, demonstrator and teacher, Kurt Hertzog enjoys the continuum of woodturning from making his own turning tools to photographing his finished turnings. Kurt is a regular feature columnist for both Woodturning Design and Woodturning Magazines, one of the five Council Members of the Pen Makers Guild, and is the President of the American Association of Woodturners. His work has been featured in the American Association of Woodturners “Rounding The Corners” Exhibit and published in Woodturning Design, American Woodturner, Woodturning, Pen World, and Stylus magazines.

Dennis Fuge
http://www.timeforyou.net/

Artist Profile

Dennis Fuge is a self-taught wood turner from Mendham, NJ, who has been turning for 40 years and spent time in South Africa, Hong Kong and the USA. Dennis was President of the New Jersey Woodturners Association and has demonstrated at events up and down the east coast. He turns a wide variety of items, but his main focus is on deep hollow vessels, platters and artistic pieces. His web site contains a great deal of information about his work and various projects of interest to wood turners, it can be viewed at http://www.timeforyou.net. In recent years Dennis has attended the Arrowmont School of Art and spent a few days with Dave Register in the UK. A lot of his work focuses on what nature has already started and he allows the wood together with its flaws and faults to determine what the finished item will look like. Some of his work will only use wood as a canvas and he creates some very eye catching pieces, using color, mixed media and carving. Many of the woods he works with are from New Jersey and are what he calls “road kill” or rescue timber. Dennis is a regular teacher at the Peters Valley School of Craft.