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. |