Welcome to my personal woodturning website! On the gallery page here you’ll find a fairly extensive gallery of work available, along with prices (which include all taxes and shipping costs via U.S. Priority Mail).
My primary humanitarian undertaking at present is to provide psychosocial treatment for the girls and women of Darfur who have been the victims of savage, ethnically-targeted sexual violence over the past 18 years.
There are now twenty trained midwives, nurses, and others with medical experience in Zamzam camp who are providing the only dedicated psychosocial services for rape and sexual violence anywhere in Darfur. Presently the project also provides monthly surgical services for seven victims of traumatic fistula injuries, the result of rape and gang rape. An additional ten girls are working with the counselors as volunteers.
Additionally, Covid-19 is poised to devastate not just Darfur but other regions of the country. The counselors—all based in the El Fasher area of North Darfur, and Zamzam camp for displaced persons in particular—are providing sanitary soap, fabric to be sewn into masks, and food assistance for the camp's most desperate families.
(See photos below from a recent issue of Radio Dabanga, the preeminent source of news in English about Darfur, that provides an excellent overview of our project)
Personal history
My woodturning career began as a teenage, but a long hiatus began with college, graduate school, and a long professional career as Professor of English Language and Literature at Smith College, and raising a family. But in the early 1990s I resumed woodturning, and have been honing my skills and refining my aesthetic ever since (alas, with a six-year hiatus for leukemia treatment).
I work in smaller forms than most professional woodturners, but prices are correspondingly lower. I do, of course, turn large items—some up to 13 inches in diameter and 10 inches in height. But high-quality turning wood has become increasingly expensive, and I like the demands of the smaller scale in which I work. The perfectionist in me in particular loves a chance to make a perfect hollow form of Buckeye Burl, perhaps my favorite turning wood, but also increasingly difficult to come by. I love the absolute precision required for true inlay work, especially with African Blackwood, the premier wood for detail work, including both inlays and finials, with which I am fascinated.
Finally, inspired by a recent visit to the Museum of Scandinavian Design in Copenhagen, I’ve begun to create mobiles. Spheroids of Buckeye Burl are suspended by a strong thread—in perfect balance—from either poplar struts or thin steel wire, curled to an attractive shape.
All the turnings that appear in my photo gallery here are for sale. Prices, along with dimensions, are indicated, and payment may be made by PayPal / credit card. Simply copy and paste the title of the specific woodturning in the appropriate box, along with the price. Shipping by USPS Priority Mail is free in the U.S.; USPS fees for international shipping, including to Canada, have become exceedingly high (special arrangements can be on a case-by case basis).
I display several photographs per woodturning; I’m happy, however, to send additional photos from different angles—just email me a request:
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