Last night Charlotte Woodworkers hosted Stephen Hatcher, who is a master woodturner from the northwest who specializes in stone inlaid turnings (bowls, platters, etc). First let me say ... amazing. I watched in full attention as the night progressed.
The demo was instructional and before our eyes he taught us how to reproduce the process used to create these stone inlays. While the process looked fairly straight forward, one would be fooled to think they would just whip out true quality art by following them. Stephen has an artistic eye -- though is background is an engineer -- and the detail and thought he put in his work was incredible. For instance, on one of the vessels he inlaid four "sides" to represent the four seasons, however each image "flowed" together and represented the life and growth of a tree (or person?) from a seedling in the spring to a stable, snow-covered bare tree in winter.
Anyway, I share this with you because I was impressed by it...
A few samples of his work from his website: http://www.stephenhatcher.com/
The demo was instructional and before our eyes he taught us how to reproduce the process used to create these stone inlays. While the process looked fairly straight forward, one would be fooled to think they would just whip out true quality art by following them. Stephen has an artistic eye -- though is background is an engineer -- and the detail and thought he put in his work was incredible. For instance, on one of the vessels he inlaid four "sides" to represent the four seasons, however each image "flowed" together and represented the life and growth of a tree (or person?) from a seedling in the spring to a stable, snow-covered bare tree in winter.
Anyway, I share this with you because I was impressed by it...
A few samples of his work from his website: http://www.stephenhatcher.com/