PNWG Updates and Activities

Back in April, I wrote at length about the new Pacific Northwest Woodturning Guild. The guild website is now up and running, and has photos of members' work, links to local galleries that sell woodturnings, and other information. The How-to-join page allows prospective members to download the application form as a PDF file for printing.

To give you an idea of the caliber of work done by our guild members, several of our members had pieces accepted for display in "Art Beneath the Bark: A Celebration of Woodturning", the featured exhibit at this year's Lake Oswego Festival of the Arts, held June 24-26 in Lake Oswego, OR. The exhibit comprised approximately 150 pieces of turned wood art, from nationally and internationally known turners who were invited to participate, and from Pacific Northwest turners whose works were juried in.

More than twenty-five woodturners from the two local woodturning clubs and the guild volunteered as docents for this exhibit. I worked a three-hour shift on both Friday and Saturday, and had an absolute blast! Not only did I get to admire many exquisitely beautiful turnings, but I got to talk to lots of people about woodturning and trees and how did they DO that?? and just radiate my passion for wood and turning and why it is so much fun!

As I was leaving Saturday evening, Corinna Campbell, who has designed the Special Exhibit for several years, told me that as a group, we woodturners were the most knowledgeable and enthusiastic docents she had ever worked with at the Festival!

Although the website preceded it by a week or so, the Lake Oswego Festival was basically our public debut. In addition to the pieces in the Special Exhibit itself, we had a very nice poster on the "handouts" table by the door, along with our just-off-the-printer brochure and flyers. It will be interesting to see in the next few weeks or months what the response will be, both in new members and prospective customers.

woodturning, guild, Lake Oswego