Side Street Studio Blog | The best art that B.C. can offer

Graeme Evans  discovered his love of woodturning shortly after retirement from 33 years with the Canadian Navy.

“I completed a woodturning course at Tools n’ Space Woodworking in 1998, worked part time at Tools n’ Space, and progressed my woodturning skills to the level which allowed me to instruct basic and intermediate courses” said Graeme. “I am currently Vice President of the Island Woodturning Guild and am an active member of two woodturning groups.”

Most of my turnings are made from local British Columbia woods gathered through local wood recovery programs. The large variety of species planted in Victoria over the years allows for some pretty spectacular wood. One of my favourite is local Dogwood which not only has lovely grain patterns, but also colour in the form of pink stripes throughout the wood. Many ornamental fruit trees yield great wood if you can dry them without checking. Western big Leaf Maple is very popular because of it’s perpensity to spalt and the lovely Burls that it produces. Arbutus creates a challenge with turning green wood.

Two of my latest turnings come from wood which was purchased a number of years ago – California Redwood, also known as Sequoia. The first is a 10 inch shallow bowl and the second is a 12 inch platter. It never ceases to amaze me what you can find when you “open” a piece of wood. Both of the pieces have “Birdseye” markings which make them very unique.

I have also just completed a Cherry bowl for the Island Woodturners Guild challenge. One of our members Cheryl Samuel from Edmonton provided templates which were produced by Gordon Langer of the Edmonton Turners Guild. The challenge was to produce a bowl as close as possible to the shape provided. The idea behind this challenge was to get the members of the guild thinking about shape and form.