Alan Hunt

[Alan Hunt]

Hi and a happy Sunday to all.
I am new to AAW forums, but with twenty years of turning to under my belt. I was a potter before this for about 20 years too, arthritis cut my potting short.

I love wood and how it feels, smells and looks. I recently moved to the Mojave Desert (Sandy Valley) pros leaving the snow and ice of the Canadian north east (Nova Scotia) and on the con side leaving a boundless source of hardwoods and softwoods alike. I am looking forward to participating in these forums getting honest critique of my work and helpful hints of what is smart to do and what is questionable in what I do. In moving I had to relocate my studio which required building two car garage and fitting the inside with electricity and power and drywalling. Well I completed that about 1.5 years back and have been working finding suitable woods to turn. I do buy imported hardwood, but they are so expensive that sales difficult, even to just reclaim the price of wood. I am fortunate that a small gallery in Idyllwild in the in the San Jacinto mountains carries some of my work.

The Pandemic has slowed sales of my work, and my online teaching has greatly declined over the past two years a people appear to be pausing their educations. I had thought with lock downs that online education would have increased at the established providers but as one of my T shirts says (the one i am wearing now) "I may be wrong' BUT it is highly unlikely"! LOL!

Going in reverse a few years back I went back to school and completed a two year degree in "Studio Practice" at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University. The certificate was great fun as I got o hangout with YOUNG people trying to be artists and I got to talk to a get advice from established Canadian artists. As an unexpected bonus I took several Art History courses which I really enjoyed, now when we visit Europe I pretty well live in art galleries, big and small.

Other education - a doctorate in Economics and Ethics, both subject which I taught for many years after completing that degree. A Master of Management and a BSc, (Honours) in Ecology - Botany. As a working professional I consulted in business management (mainly small businesses), managed a program in "Small Business Management" for the Yukon Government. I have served on many boards and committees, most notable as Chairman of a Public Utility Board. During all my education and work time I continued to "make' things, wooden, plaster sculptures, paintings and finally ceramic and now wood objects.

I try to make functional objects that are of a high aesthetic standard, pieces that people will want to hold - at fair we have a sign that goes predominantly at our table saying "Please touch us, thank you; The Vessels/Objects" - and it works.

I am presently make resin objects (about 75% of my time) and solid wood objects. I get Russian Olive, Popular and Ash and Elm. The most plentiful being Russian Olive - which is a difficult wood to turn with challenging grain and a tremendous amount of shrinkage as it dries. Sometimes I am lucky and get a piece or two of Mesquite. I have seven pieces on the go all with resin. I attach a few of my pieces below for your viewing pleasure. As I learning in Art School critique is difficult a it needs to be objective - just saying Oh I don't like that - isn't critique it is opinion I do welcome your critique and opinion. Critique I will reply to a opinion gets a simple "Thanks".

WWWWWWWWWWWW

So my best wishes to all of you and keep on turning.
Alan

PS I would be happy to provide details on each piece. They range in size from 7 inches to 17 inches high. I use Alumilite and presently I use the "Amazing Deep Pour" brand but have tried several other types.
Alan

 

[Bill Boehme]

Welcome to the AAW forum, Alan, and thanks for the great introduction. It seems evident that your broad range of experience in various fields of art has enabled you to think further out of the box than the usual "round and brown". I would like to know more about the four turnings that you've posted. I would guess that the first two were made using the "bowl from a board" technique. I can't explain it, but after seeing the first one I had to open a bag of potato chips. The one that especially grabbed my attention is the last one. My wild guess is that pine cones were used to create very interesting patterns.

 

[Emiliano Achaval]

Welcome to the forum! Great introduction Alan! When do people ask me you do what? I tell them I'm a wooden potter. I stole that line from my friend David Ellsworth. Coming from that field you have no problem understanding design. I tried a few resin/hybrid pieces. I did not like the mess of what it looked like fiberglass, strands of resin all over, white powder everywhere. Turning wood is messy enough, LOL. I'll try to remember that you welcome C&C. You might want to add in the description, C&C welcome. Not everybody wants to hear what's wrong with their work, LOL I'll promise to be gentle. Aloha from Maui

 

[Alan Hunt]

To Bill and Emiliano

Thanks for your responses.

I need no motivation to open a bag of potato chips especially since we are now in football playoff season – the only time that I actually watch games.

I had never heard of the term “wooden potter”, but it is apt and certainly from a pedigreed source. I am sure that I will be using that often when at fairs and community sales.

Each piece that I posted has a long history as they are part of my learning. I will describe each piece in detail – over the next few days – one at a time. I will start with the pinecones bowl.

My pine trees are productive, dropping lots of cones each year. I wanted to use them in one of my first resin pieces. I collected many cones and set them in a box to dry. I picked out the opened and what I presumed to be dried cones. I had seen a lot of people dump pinecones into a mold - fill it with resin and turn away – some got very interesting results, some got less than interesting. I tried slicing the cones with my bandsaw and I liked what I saw – the interior of the cones mimicked the central trunk and branches of a tree.

I cut many slices and chose 18 cone slices, each approximately ¾ of an inch thick.

The mold I used was two Tupperware bowls. In their original state when stacked they had very little space between themselves. I added the wooden bottom spacer that you see in the completed bowl, between each Tupperware bottoms. The bowls then had about ¾+ inch of space between them. I dissembled the bowls and siliconed the pinecone slices onto the larger bowl. Next, I carefully reassembled the bowls, nesting the smaller one within the larger and its attached pinecones. I decided that aesthetically the bowl should have ribs and I cut these and inserted them also. After weighting down the inner bowl with a couple of rocks. I mixed and poured a 20-minute setting Alumilite. I underestimated the volume needed by ½ and frantically mixed up more resin. By the time I got to pouring the next resin batch, the first batch was starting to go exothermic/set.

After several days (I always allow extra time for curing) I disassembled the solidified resin. Tupperware makes the sides of the casting come out practically ready to polish. Despite the finished look, I needed to do a small amount of turning to complete the bowl shape. Once I had it trued, I added a segmented rim of walnut. I laid the segmented/glued walnut ring flat and added a layer of resin onto it and placed the bowl (with trued and flattened top) onto it. Once the resin cured, I turned the top walnut ring to what you see now. I used 5-minute epoxy resin to attach the walnut rim.

I had some air bubbles around the base that I filled with 5-minute epoxy resin - 5-minute resin forms an invisible mend.

So that is the saga of my third ever resin piece. Some issues developed. The sliced cones although ‘dry’ had residual resin in them and some seeds also remained they appeared to have had some residual resin. Leaking resin appeared on the surface and continued to leak/appear for several months – I clean them up and now that issue has stopped. The dual pour with exothermic imbalance caused some latitudinal cracks at the line of the two pours. These cracks are minor and appear to have been arrested by the wooden ribs – they do not affect the stability nor integrity of the bowl. The bowl will not be sold and will remain in my wife’s collection.

My next challenge is to use a massive pinecone approximately 12 inches high and a good 6-inches diameter, I am thinking about covering it with a single pour in a cylindrical Tupperware container, if I find one; will then split it down the center and polish the flat interior surface to get decorative book ends? Or something of that sort. I am guessing that it is about $75+ of resin and 15 to 20 hours of labor – so if I sell it that would be $375 at a minimum! Perhaps it becomes another piece for my wife’s collection since she has first call on all my work. What she decides not to keep, she prices and places it with a gallery or holds it for our next craft fair.



I am going to eat some potato chips now, have some soup and get ready to turn this afternoon.

Best wishes

Alan