Turning - The Fuzzy Edges Form Of Woodworking?

I would say you are in the "Fuzzy Edges" when you are no longer turning the complete piece. Using a router, or sculpturing holes in certain areas and things like that would fall into sculpturing.

But, given enough axis options, you can take off a little or a lot of wood at very specific places, just as you would doing "normal" carving. Check out some of Mark Sfirri's pieces in the picture of the shelves full of "stuff" on this page.

Hell, take just about any piece on that page - all technically "turned" - but they sure look like sculpture to me. With a special Escoulen ball chuck you have an almost infinite number of "centers" you can use to remove wood almost anywhere you want to. Granted, it may take a lot of head scratching and maybe a brain cramp to do it - but once you go beyond single axis turning there are plenty of options available

If you do integral "feet" on a bowl, and that requires some work with some wood rasps and/or a grinder, is it still a turning?

What about charring then wire brushing or sand blasting the surface, or some of the surface, of the turned piece?

Hunter turns a piece, then bandsaws it up and places the pieces together in a different way. Sculpture or turning.

Malcom Tibbet(t) turns two identical bowls, cuts each into equal parts, flips parts and stick things back together again to create mobius strip type pieces. Turning or sculpture?

charlie b

They look like sculpture to me too but id you're using your lathe to turn them, wouldn't it still be turning? K.

But, given enough axis options, you can take off a little or a lot of wood at very specific places, just as you would doing "normal" carving. Check out some of Mark Sfirri's pieces in the picture of the shelves full of "stuff" on this page.

Hell, take just about any piece on that page - all technically "turned" - but they sure look like sculpture to me. With a special Escoulen ball chuck you have an almost infinite number of "centers" you can use to remove wood almost anywhere you want to. Granted, it may take a lot of head scratching and maybe a brain cramp to do it - but once you go beyond single axis turning there are plenty of options available

If you do integral "feet" on a bowl, and that requires some work with some wood rasps and/or a grinder, is it still a turning?

What about charring then wire brushing or sand blasting the surface, or some of the surface, of the turned piece?

Hunter turns a piece, then bandsaws it up and places the pieces together in a different way. Sculpture or turning.

Malcom Tibbet(t) turns two identical bowls, cuts each into equal parts, flips parts and stick things back together again to create mobius strip type pieces. Turning or sculpture?

charlie b

Does anything at all rest on this question?

A lot of energy gets devoted to this sort of thing in the craft/art/design world, and it seems to me the only useful vrsion of it is if it's important to separate turning from sculpture, like if you for some reason need to store one in a room separate from another. Which doesn't happen very often. Classification systems originate, usually, as ways of organizing things (books in libraries, faculty at a university, footgear in a store).

there is some objective, factual basis for classifiying natural kinds of things into rigid categories (bananas are genetically different, in defined ways, from slugs). But for all human-made things, you run into the problem all the time that there jsut aren't rigid, crisp boundaries between groups of things. Think about prosaic words, like "furniture". Is a lamp a piece of furniture? Is an electric fan? What about a shelf on a wall? There is no right answer to these questions -- they just show how vague words are when you try to press the point.

-- Andy Barss

Maybe mental / psychological barriers to get over/under/around/beyond? We often limit ourselves with self imposed or imposed by others boundaries. The realization that most "boundaries" aren't?

Take the "I can't carve or sculpt - but I CAN turn some interesting" things. Maybe if you sneak up to, and then slightly passed. the I Can Turn But Not Carve/Sculpt interface, whole no creative avenues may present themselves.

That may make "turning" a somewhat unique woodworking gateway to all sorts of other types of woodworking, and creative/artistic expression, be it in wood or some other medium, or mix of mediums.

Well it did make a whole hell of a lot of difference when I was doing "craft shows" and "art shows". The "fine arts" shows were better publicized, scheduled to coincide with a special event and promoted much more than the "arts and crafts" shows which often took place the previous weekend, acting as a means to inform and attract people to the following weekend's Fine Arts show.

And the promoter(s) of the Fine Arts shows often took a smaller percentage of the sales than taken for the Arts & Crafts shows. The shows were marketed to very different audiences - one having beer, sodas and hot dogs and hamburgers, the other cheeses, wines and french sounding bottled water(s).

I made jewelry and small sculpture - in silver and gold, the jewelry using topaz, aquamarine, amathyst, emeralds and diamonds. In an "arts & crafts" show, my works were at the high end of the audiences's price range - or beyond their price range. In the "fine arts" show, I was in the lower to mid price range. Sales and subsequent commissioned work was significantly different depending on how my work was categorized.

This could get into Zen - everything is everything - each merely a different manifestation of the One Thing

charlie b

Using labels to put the elements and variations of something into pigeon holes is usually a first step in recognizing the relationships of parts to the whole. This can result in progress, but I think divisive descriptives can also be a misstep that can be counterproductive.

Separation of wood turning and wood sculpture into questionably distinct efforts can inhibit our appreciation and best use of both ends of woodturning's broad spectrum. On a larger OT scale, witness the problems that separate federal departments can cause in dealing with international terror.

Again OT, but comparable; I remember when the major effort in managing psychiatric problems seemed to be concerned with labelling patients as distinct clinical entities and assigning them to separate diagnostic pigeon holes. That probably hindered true understanding that would have led to better therapy for many sufferers. You could suffer from schizophrenia or from manic depression, but like the old song advised, they didn't "mess with Mr. In-between".

If woodturning and wood sculpturing had been restricted to separate disciplines as some would have had us do, think of what we would have lost. Making artistic and/or useful wooden shapes is a continuous endeavor and wood turning isn't fenced off from wood sculpturing. I just stopped in time to avoid saying, "and neither is turned craft fenced off from turned art". :)

Turn to Safety, Arch Fortiter