Andi Wolfe's day job is as a botanist at The Ohio State University, but she has this little problem with a woodturning habit that just can't seemed to be kicked. She's been turning since Christmas day in 1998, when her husband gave her a set of turning tools to go along with a Jet minilathe purchased earlier that same year. Little did he know what he had started that day, but he has since learned that there are never enough tools nor wood nor time for this obsession most people would call, "woodturning".

Andi doesn't have a real studio, but considers the entire house her "work" area. Her favorite spot is a recliner and table in the "living room" of the house where she has her pyrography equipment and a stack of projects in various stages of completion. Her small Yorkshire Terrier is a frequent collaborator and has "inspired" several new design motifs after rousing suddenly from a nap in her chair while she's burning in a design on one of her turnings. The kitchen is her finishing and photography room, and the dining room table is her easel for painting her botanical motif designs. The music room is her storage area for all of her photography gear, and the basement computer room is her working office. Her library of woodturning books is scattered throughout the house on whatever shelf (or other horizontal surface) is available for that latest book purchase. The shop, you ask? Well, that's actually the laundry room . . .

This chaotic environment is pretty typical for Andi's life, in general. Multi-tasking should be her middle name and she juggles career, family, and various hobbies in the same way she organizes her surroundings. Everything always seems to work out the way it is supposed to, but sometimes it's very hectic in the Wolfe den.

Andi's interest in woodturning emerged after spending a few years building Shaker-style furniture for her home. One project involved turning a pedestal for a Shaker candle stand during a hands-on class at a local woodworking store. The instructor would not let any of the students use anything except a round-nose scraper, but the experience was still so much fun that Andi decided to pursue woodturning as a new hobby. That Jet minilathe saw a lot of action the first couple of years, but Andi moved over to the "dark side" after seeing the Stubby 750 in action at the Minneapolis AAW symposium in 2001.

Andi specializes in surface enhancements inspired from her botanical research. The obvious botanical motifs are the floral and leaf designs that appear on her vessels, bowls, and platters. The less obvious designs are inspired from plant anatomy as viewed with a light or scanning electron microscope. It is not unusual to see epidermal cells represented as texturing motifs, or plant stem anatomy depicted by carving and pyrography. One of the features of her designs is the wrapping of a motif from front to back, which makes a turning a three dimensional canvas where leaf vines twine haphazardly and may "grow" through a crack in the wood from one side to the other of a form.

Pyrography is used for carving the outlines of plant parts that are colored using acrylic paints or Prismacolor markers. Pyrography is also used for texturing and for "relief burning", which would be the analog of relief carving except the excess wood is burned away. Andi also uses carving and scorching in her surface enhancement designs, and sometimes a combination of these two techniques. Her preferred carving tools are the Foredom rotary carver and the WeeCheer reciprocating attachment as well as the Powercrafter turbo carver. Scorching is done with several models of micro torches.

Andi is an active member of the Central Ohio Woodturners and the Ohio Valley Woodturners Guild as well as the American Association of Woodturners. She was also recently awarded an Honorary membership in the Western Cape Woodturners Association of South Africa. Her botanical research takes her to South Africa nearly every year, and she has made many good friends in the South African woodturning community. She will be sponsoring an exhibit of South African woodturning at the 2003 AAW Symposium in Pasadena, California.

For more information about Andi's woodturning or demonstration and exhibit schedule, check out her website at http://www.AndiWolfe.com.