What are my bowls about?  Fractals and attention.  

Fractals are natural patterns that repeat on different levels: the jagged edges of grains of sand, and a mountain range.  When I make a good curve on a bowl and it breaks, each part still has a nice curve.  The graph expression of a fractal equation is a beautiful curve, and I think of the curves as expressing a fractal equation, or an Underlying Truth.  

When I’m turning, it’s not about me; it’s about the piece and the time and attention it needs.  I set aside the fear of breaking it or getting hurt.  I try and keep ego out of it, and competitiveness.  I just turn shapes that feel right and look for harmony.  Originality for its own sake doesn’t interest me. I get more pleasure out of selling a piece to a first-time craft buyer than to a collector. There is a Sufi tradition that objects made with attention retain a certain virtue, baraka, as a result.  Wood, wool, brass, and clay are thought (or perceived!) to be especially suitable for this.

One example of finding a good shape through harmony is how one makes the cuts.  I shift my weight and rotate my body, with little arm movement, and it feels indistinguishable from Tai Chi.

Some turners that I admire are Bob Stocksdale, Del Stubbs, John Jordan and Bert Marsh, among others… but especially Bob, with his Quaker simplicity.

A number of books have influenced me, including the Sufi author Idries Shah, The Gift by Lewis Hyde, Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland,  The Unknown Craftsman: Japanese Insight into Beauty by Soetsu Yanagi,   and Nature and Art of Workmanship by David Pye. William Hogarth’s  theory of the Line of Beauty,  expresses ideas about curves similar to mine,  though what he drew was awful.