Lead Demonstrators for SWAT 2022

The Southwest Association of Turners strives to provide the best in demonstrations and workshops for our annual symposium attendees. 

We offer demonstrations by internationally renowned artists, regional woodturning experts, and hands on experiences by our supporting chapters and vendors. 

You can learn how to do just about anything your heart desires (with a piece of wood) after spending the day in the company of the demonstrators at SWAT.  Take a look at the information below for a complete listing of the experts providing demonstrations at the 2021 SWAT symposium.

Here are the Lead Demonstrators for SWAT 2022.  

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Trent Bosch

Barry Gross

Mike Mahoney

Dennis Paullus

Martin Saban-Smith

Craig Timmerman

Andi Wolfe

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Trent Bosch

Trent Bosch has been focused on woodturning professionally for more than 30 years.  Over the years he has enjoyed many facets of this medium, from production woodturning to sculptural one of a kind pieces to demonstrating and teaching hands on classes.  More recently he has devoted more time to developing, designing and manufacturing tools for woodturners, as well as fostering the growth of his artistic children.  Trent has taught and demonstrated his techniques for turning and sculpting wood throughout the world. To learn more about Trent you can visit his website at trentbosch.com or trentboschtools.com.

Demo topics:

Revelations In Hollowing  Over the past 30 years I have been pursuing the art of the hollow form -throughout this time I have used and developed some very unique techniques and equipment. in this demo I will go through all the techniques that in the creation of a hollow form with an emphasis on the latest technologies I have developed for hollowing making this much more than just a hollow form demo.

Vessels and Surfaces  In this demo participants will not only learn all the techniques that I go through in the creation of a hollow form but ways to make the surface outstanding! From textures to colors to sandblasting and beyond – making this much more than just a hollow form demo.

Barry Gross

Barry Gross started creating his fine writing instruments over 20 years ago working with exotic woods. Since then he has moved to working with resins to create his one-of-a-kind fine writing instruments. He is a published author of six books on turning and pen making and has published over 70 articles for several woodworking magazines including Fine Woodworking. 

In 2010 he won a Readers’ Choice Award from Pen World Magazine for his Watch Parts Pen. In 2012 he was a double Niche Award finalist and was commissioned by the White House to make pens for foreign dignitaries by former Vice President Dick Cheney. In 2014 -2015 he was accepted as a member of Who’s Who for outstanding achievements in the field of woodturning. For the past 15 years he has been a featured demonstrator for The Woodworking Shows and has demonstrated for the National and Regional AAW sponsored events.

Demo topic:  Making a Kitless pen using a Jowo Nib

 Mike Mahoney

 I've been a professional woodturner for thirty-five years.  My production work was mainly salad bowls, burial urns, platters, plates, and other utility items. I am passionate about my craft and educating the public about woodturning. My work is designed to last a lifetime. I use wood that I harvest from urban sources that matches its utility.

Dennis Phallus

 

I’m a Woodturner and Sculptor. I started this journey in 1996, a slow start but quickly learned the basic and fell in love with the process of producing Art from recycled trees.

I make Functional and sculptural work. It is very powerful to make functional work beautiful. I find invoking emotions with my work is very satisfying.  The simple and even extraordinary embellishments can be made with surprisingly basic tools and techniques.

As a professional Woodturner I have turned many, many bowls and vessels, many hundreds of Boxes. Boxes are the very first projects I turned on a lathe and one of my favorites.

As I continue to share my techniques through demonstrations and teaching students one on one, I find that my passions have not dimmed but burn ever brighter.

Demo Topics:

Acorn box: with carved top  My signature Acorn box with a unique friction fit. Fairly simple design that ensures a good fit, no more loose fitting boxes. this box has turned elements and carved elements too. Simple carving techniques and texturing that give this Acorn box a very organic look. this demo will cover end grain hollowing with simple techniques ,carving the top and texturing with basic tools. This is a fun project

Carving and Texturing  I will show how I do carving and texturing on hollow vessels, boxes ,and wall pieces using a variety of carving tools.

Martin Saban-Smith

Martin Saban-Smith is a registered professional turner from the United Kingdom. He is well known for his social media presence and as being the developer of the Hampshire Sheen range of finishes and the founder of online turning club Woodturning360. He also runs a woodturning supply shop with Les Thorne. His turning is generally artistic and creative in nature, generally involving the use of color and texture. For his debut presentations for SWAT, he will be examining a specific set of rules for bowl forms and the application of colors by hand and finishing techniques. He has demonstrated across the UK, Europe and visited the Kansas City AAW seminar a few years ago. Early in the COVID pandemic, Martin embraced and lead professional take-up of remote demonstrations in the country.

Demo Topics:

Fibonacci Bowl  This demonstration has gone down well with UK clubs as it challenges perceptions turners may have in turning in proportion and further challenges the use of the golden ratio, specifically in bowl turning. This is a very interactive demonstration which historically has included a lot of audience input and discussion!

Mastering Atmospheric Coloring by Hand  Martin has been coloring by hand since the beginning of his turning career and has mastered a specific technique for adding depth and atmospheric. Also in this demonstration, Martin explores the importance of finishing and how every finish choice for every piece should be considered before application.

Craig Timmerman

 

After many years in the computer and software industry, Craig Timmerman has been a full-time artist and production wood turner since 2008.  In addition to demonstrating and teaching at many AAW chapters, he has demonstrated at AAW Symposiums, numerous SWAT symposiums, the Utah Symposium, the North Dakota Symposium, and the Rocky Mountain Symposium.  Craig has started the Armadillo Woodworks YouTube channel and is setup to do remote, interactive demos.  He has been a member of the Central Texas Woodturners and the AAW since 2008.

He picked up woodturning over twenty years ago when he took a weekend class at a local store.  After that weekend the wood working equipment in his shop ceased to be used for anything except woodturning.  His specialties include non-round turnings, hollow forms, spheres, lamps, and production gift items.  Many of his pieces combine multiple turnings and bent laminations.   He works primarily with reclaimed timber accentuating the flaws by making them the focal point of the piece; often filling them with crushed stone.

 Craig’s work is in several central Texas galleries and can also be found on his website, armadillowoodworks.com.  He has been married to his wife Tina for over 38 years and they live just outside Austin, TX.

Demo Topic: Winged bowl basics Standard, round bowls are great projects, but when you want to take your bowls to another level, try giving them wings!  That’s what happens when you take a bowl blank and leave the corners—you get a bowl with wings.  Non-round bowls are one of my signature pieces.  I like to throw in a few differences such as wings with beads and coves or interesting shaped pieces such as a rectangle, rhombus, triangle, or even star shapes.  In this demo I will cover some non-round bowl shapes that can be done and will proceed to turn a rhombus-shaped bowl.

Demo Topic: Fun with spheres  There are many different ways to turn spheres.  I will demonstrate the technique I think is the easiest and the most flexible in that you can use this technique to make many things other than a solid sphere.  There are no special tools or jigs needed. I will show the basics of making a sphere and then cover making a sphere boxes.  Other projects such as hollow spheres, candle holders, ball in ball designs will also be discussed.

Andi Wolfe

 

My career has been spent as a plant evolutionary biologist, but I have many interests beyond the work I do as a scientist. My science background has led me into an exploration of art - particularly in working with wood. I have also discovered the joys of painting, and the skills I’ve gained through the photography I use to document the plants I study have led to an exploration of many genres in photography. Two years ago, I began an exploration of glass and have incorporated glass into my woodturning practice.

The natural world offers many inspirations, especially when it is examined at high magnification. I am a botanist by day and a part time woodturner in whatever spare time I can glean from the week. My botanical training has served me well in my art practice.

In woodturning, my work has focused on the use of surface enhancements that employ botanical motifs. Some of the botanical inspirations are obvious. For example, I sometimes use a botanical print motif to illustrate various flowering stages of a particular plant, or I'll cover one of my turnings in maple or oak leaves. Other designs are less obviously botanical unless one is used to seeing plants at the microscopic level. I sometimes enhance a turning by carving a textural motif inspired from cellular structures of plants. For the past 15 years, I have been carving botanical designs into my turnings in 3D. 

Experimentation is part of my design process. I view wood as a medium for exploration and not just a material that has a pretty grain pattern. I tend to use woods that are fine grained with subtle figuring so that my botanical designs become part of the whole vessel, complementary to the wood as opposed to a distraction to the eye. My goal is to enhance the surface so that the vessel becomes a three-dimensional canvas that entices the viewer to explore all aspects of the piece.

Demo Topics: 

Exploring surface enhancement  Surface enhancement involves manipulating the surface of a bowl, platter, vessel, or other turned object. It can be as simple as adding a stain, paint, or reactive solution, or texturing the surface. My primary methods for surface enhancement include pyrography, texturing with rotary carving burs, texturing with carving gouges, scorching, and coloring.

Going beyond the surface – carving in 3D  Carving a turned vessel can be challenging, fun, frustrating, rewarding, and/or puzzling.  Things to consider in getting started are:
•  Choice of wood (fine-grained woods are easier to carve than coarse and open-grained
woods; soft wood is easier to carve than hard and dense wood).
•  Shape of vessel and design elements.
•  Wall thickness of turned vessel.
•  Design layout and inspiration.