Audience
The eight-week Turning Intensive is designed for dedicated amateur woodworkers or aspiring professionals who wish to bring their work up to the next level.
Curriculum
The Turning Intensive curriculum leads students through a sequence of hands-on projects that develop foundation skills in all facets of professional woodturning.
Production woodturning – learn to turn production bowls, platters, stair parts, furniture parts, and other objects with consistency, speed, and quality.
Creative woodturning – develop your aesthetic voice by making one-of-a-kind functional and sculptural objects that are turned and carved.
Furniture components – learn to turn and join legs, pulls, finials, rungs, and other furniture parts.
Bowl turning – learn how to prepare and lay out turning blanks, modify and sharpen bowl and spindle gouges for end-grain and side-grain work, and develop new competencies and confidence for creating a wide array of shapes and forms.
Milling – gain competence with the table saw, band saw, drill press, lathe, router, and other woodworking machines for stock preparation, forming, and joinery.
Sharpening – learn how to grind and sharpen turning, carving, and woodworking tools such as gouges, skews, v-tools, and chisels.
Tool making – solve unusual turning challenges by making your own turning tools, jigs, and attachments.
Application Process
Participants are accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. No application is required.
All experience levels welcome.
Enrollment is limited to 11.
Faculty
Lead Instructor Beth Ireland is joined for two of the projects by visiting instructors Kristin LeVier and Ken Wise.
Beth Ireland has been a professional woodworker since 1983, specializing in turning and sculpture. She holds an MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and her work has been widely exhibited and published, including a 2015 profile in American Woodturner. She has also held several prestigious Windgate fellowships and participated in the International Turning Exchange. Beth’s business encompasses everything from production runs of turned balusters to sculpture to one-of-a-kind stringed instruments. She is the Lead Instructor for our Turning Intensive and teaches turning for the Comprehensive. Beth lives in St. Petersburg, FL, and her website is bethireland.net.
Visiting Instructor Kristin LeVier is a former molecular biologist who creates work at the intersection of art, nature and science to remind us of our connection to the breathtaking spectacle of the natural world. Her organic carved and bent wood sculpture embodies an ethereal sense of motion. She spoke about her work in a TEDx talk on The Art of Science and in a PBS short feature. Her work has been exhibited widely and featured in books and magazines such as American Craft and American Woodturner. She teaches craft and design at symposia and craft schools nationally and internationally. Her studio is nestled among stunning rolling hills in Moscow, ID. For more on Kristin’s work, visit kristinlevier.com.
Visiting Instructor Ken Wise is a professional woodworker in Brunswick, ME. Over the past three decades his interests and skills have migrated from house construction and finish carpentry, to cabinet and furniture making, to carving and turning. His work today consists of architectural turning, furniture, and a line of turned and carved bowls, spoons, and kitchenware that he sells through shops and galleries. Ken also makes canoe paddles and wildlife art in native Maine hardwoods for regional craft fairs, including the Common Ground Fair in Unity, ME. For more on Ken’s work, visit kenwisewoodcarver.com.
The Turning Intensive was featured in American Woodturner magazine, December 2013. Click here to read the article.
Tuition: $6,650
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