Category: Education
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carving place
Around a scratched and gouged workbench a group of Syrian men (and one notable Iraqi) came together to share skills, songs, stories, and to make a woodcarving. For some, this was a chance to reconnect with old tools that they knew so well from home, to share their exquisite talent & joy in making. Others,…
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Revealing The Treasure
Pictures from last months relief carving class. Warm light, playing over subtle tactile traces, left as our students stripped away whatever wood wasn’t necessary for telling their own creation stories: Tales that sometimes shifted in the making/telling. Watching the tools move over the wood, skillfully revealing a little more of these beautiful designs each moment…
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A Better Place to Sit
Starting with a firm place to stand, a still point from which to safely swing an axe, the fulcrum from which to move the Earth. Carving it into new, more fitting shapes. Ending with dog-tired, aching bodies and with a better place to sit and rest, to sit and contemplate, to sit and tell stories.…
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Graduating with Full Honours
As part of Welbeck School’s Children’s University project we were asked to give some aspiring students the experience of woodwork. No one imagined that the wood in question would be enormous, raw trunks of willow, birch and oak tree, with bark, twigs & leaves still attached. Undaunted our charges took to splitting, chopping, drilling, shaving,…
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Weaving The World
Wishing everyone a hopeful January 1st, and a year that might begin with “a happy sound… Love!” Remembering back, 6 years ago working with amazing young people, classes 1, 2 and 4 at Greenfields Community School, working together to weave a whole world. 80 triangles sawed & stuck & woven into a geodesic wonder. Four…
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Perches of a Different Order
Beautiful work this past weekend, creating simple seats, from cleft wood, growing as dear trees that defined our horizon only weeks ago. A giant ash that has already defied many attempts to bring it to the ground judging by the twisted, scarred and buckling trunk & silver birch half a century old or more, battleground…
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A Fine Fleet of Vessels
Remembering friends gathered by a well fed fire. Kettle boiling constantly, whistling a wedding march. It was a beautiful way to spend a December day, a privilege for our family to join in the Nag Do (not a stag do) celebrations before Jeff and Jo’s wedding. Over the day rough cherry logs were split, carved…
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A Spoonful of Sunshine
On Sunday it felt as though the world had run right past spring and into summer without stopping or looking back. The air was so warm, but the acid green hawthorn leaves, cherry blossom and bluebells coming through planted us firmly in the season. Carving spoons is a wonderful way to connect with the here…
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SkellyWeg & The Flower of Love
After looking at the work of M C Escher, Fiona at Mencap was inspired to make these two wonderful woodcut memento mori. Carving into the smooth limewood was a challenge at first, getting the right angle, shifting weight & muscle, but by the final cut Fiona was nimble and expressive with the tools, even surprising…
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Rustic Sensitivity
Two words that describe an intensely physical day, working in what must have been the warmest room at Lakeside Arts Centre (was it our relentless energy or the muggy weather?) with attentive makers, turning a recalcitrant tree or two into 8 beautiful stools (give or take). Wonderful. Hard work, handful of blisters, but so rewarding!…