CONTENTS:
Page One
Hats Off to JoHannes Michelsen and Deb
Fanelli—for Originality!
Page Two
Marshall Stokes: New Shows and New Directions
Cheryl Dow: Planning a Woodburning Celebration for
August 2007
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Hat |
Danish-born American woodturning artist JoHannes Michelsen and his
wife, American wood sculptor Deb Fanelli, live and work
in Manchester Center, Vermont—at least when
they're not on the road exhibiting at shows and giving
demonstrations and workshops.
Although their specialties as artists are quite
distinct, this delightful couple met because of their
common interest in wood, at an art show in Baltimore,
Maryland, where their respective display booths were
nearby "neighbors."
As you will see as the stories of their creative
endeavors unfold, each developed a unique technique to
express their individual artistic visions. In doing
that, within the larger technique, each likewise and
spontaneously came up with a unique pyro
technique as part of that remarkable vision.
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From this . . . | . . . To this! |
With a "Few" Steps in Between . . .
Images courtesy of the artist
JoHannes recounts that it took him about ten years
from the time he first had this brilliant idea of
creating woodturned hats to actually thinking through
it to the point of beginning and producing his first
hat in 1990.
After that, over time and with each new project, he
started refining the technique and inventing ways of
improving the process, such as his Light
Box, which is actually more of a "light
cylinder" that fits gently and snugly inside of
the hat, attaches to the lathe, and has a lightbulb
inside (on bearings) so that he can simultaneously
light the hat from the inside while working. He
invented this primarily to allow him to continue to
turn the hat on the lathe once the wood hat is
detached from the lathe near the end of the process,
after the waste wood that was used to hold it in place
has been cut away. His Light Box invention allows him
to more efficiently and precisely continue sanding and
shaping the hat, especially at the dome of the hat,
where it used to be attached. In this extremely
delicate process (and another when he removed the wood
from inside the hat and shined a light from the
outside in), the light shining through the wood, which
is by then extremely thin, allows him to visually
gauge (while he is working and the hat is turning)
just how much wood to remove without removing too
much. He also devised a means of casting a shadow
during one part of his amazing process that guides him
in accurately shaping the angle of the brim of the
hat. All of this is done to create a hat that is thin
and flexible like fabric yet still sturdy and very
lightweight (only about 6 to 8 ounces).
Another invention, and the focus of this segment, is
his Pyroburnishing Process, which he
developed so he could color the hatbands of his hats
without staining or painting them. His hatbands
are essentially wood on wood.
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The Lathe and a Bowl
with a Pyroburnished Rim |
If you review the illustrated process
page on JoHannes' web site to see what turning a chunk
of wood into a pliable hat is all about, you will get
some idea, and I highly recommend your doing that
because you will be in awe of what he does. However,
I had the privilege of witnessing the process in
person and seeing a hat appear while curly chips were
flying through the air, and I still cannot adequately
describe it.
All I can say is that it is no wonder he is in such
demand for workshops and demonstrations even the one
that the Smithsonian Museum puts on each year in
Washington, D.C. And no wonder that his art work can
be found in so many major art collections and featured
in an impressive list of magazines and books.
He shapes both the crown of the hat and the brim of
the hat while the dome of it is attached to the lathe.
Afterwards, he goes in and routs out the inside of
the hat, first in more generous sweeps and turns. But
then, as he starts to really shape it and get to the
inside wall of the crown, he shines a light from the
outside in. He can see the light more and more clearly
through the ever thinner wall of the hat, so he can
gauge how close he can keep cutting and shaving
without going through the wood. It is something
wondrous to behold.
He has studied the proportions and the ratios of the
various parts of the hats (in a variety styles of hats
for men and women, as you will see on his website),
and he has such an eye for knowing just how much to
cut, shave, and sand in every direction, that it is
amazing. When he thinks he's done it, he measures with
the calipers and he is almost always exactly right
down to the sixteenth of an inch!
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JoHannes Michelsen
Beginning to Burnish a Hatband
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Tool. JoHannes' technique for burnishing is
also part of his turning process, because he does his
burnishing using one of his two lathes, which are
shown in the workshop
page on his web site. They are both antiques--one
late 19th century and the other early 20th
century—and both weigh more than a ton each.
Exotic Woods. The key to the choice of woods,
of course, is that they create a color contrast
against the (usually) light colored wood like Maple or
Beech that is the hat or bowl. For this purpose,
JoHannes uses one or more of several exotic woods,
depending on the project. His favorites are
Madagascar Rosewood, Ebony, Wenge, and Zirocote.
Technique. After the outside of the hat is
mostly shaped, and while the dome of the hat still has
waste wood at the top, which is firmly attached to the
lathe with four wood screws, Johannes cuts a stick of
the exotic wood he has chosen as the embellishment for
the hatband.
The colored stick of exotic wood (shown in the picture
of the bowl and lathe above) will be cut to 3/4-inch
wide and 1/16-inch thick. While the hat is turning at
700 rpm on the lathe (as seen in the close-up view
immediately above), with his hand steadied in front
and to the side of the lathe on the support (which is
shown in the first picture of the lathe above),
JoHannes presses the edge of the stick against the
area of the hatband.
The intense speed of the turning lathe plus the
pressure he exerts with the stick of exotic wood
against the turning hat cause the friction that in
turn creates the heat that melts and therefore
burns the exotic wood (and also deposits some of
it) onto the hatband.
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JoHannes Michelsen
Completing the Pyroburnishing on a Hatband
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Sanding the Stick of Exotic Wood. Once the stick of exotic wood has been used, it soon needs to be freshened because it gets rounded and slick and sealed at the end from the heat. That is when JoHannes sands the end clean on both sides at a 45-degree angle to then use not the point but the edge on each side to continue working.
JoHannes Michelsen has a
beautifully prepared and wonderfully informative web
site at www.woodhat.com,
which you will want to explore at length.
See the workshop
page on his web site to see his studio in Vermont, his
lathes, and his Light Box invention, and much more.
See the process
page on his web site to see more details about the
entire process of making a hat.
Link here to the Capital
Area Woodturners where JoHannes Michelsen gave his
recent demonstration and workshop.
The JoHannes
Michelsen Salon in
the E-Museum of Pyrographic Art is another site that
features his outstanding work.
I was putting this segment together for publication
when only a week ago I had the serendipitous
opportunity of seeing JoHannes' demonstration at the
Capital Area Woodturners in Alexandria, Virginia,
where it was standing room only on the day of the
demonstration. What a treat it was!
In the demo room, there was also a display of
JoHannes' hats—full-sized ones, as well as some
of his mini hats. JoHannes has expanded his
repertoire to include four sizes of hats: Full-sized
(including custom fitted), Mini, Sub-mini, and Micro!
His wife Deb Fanelli was there to help out and during
our interview even modeled one of his beautiful hats
for me—a stylish ebonized one he had made
especially for her—fabulous!
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Stack of Bowls |
It is hard to conjure the image of a diminutive woman
like Deb Fanelli wielding an
angle grinder to make bold, burned cuts in wood works.
Yet, despite her small size, when she walks into a
room, in her quiet confident way, dressed in her
trademark black and sporting her large collection of
striking silver bangles, she already makes a bold
statement.
Before she hit on her innovative technique, Deb was
already working in wood sculpture and using an angle
grinder. It was when the disk wore down and she
noticed the irregularities and burn marks she would
get—a situation that normally is the signal to
replace the disk—that she decided to start
experimenting.
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Deb Fanelli
Pyrosculpting a Bowl |
Deb decided to try sacrificing the sharp cuts she
could get using an angle grinder with a sharp disk, to
create instead designs making cuts that simultaneously
produced a burned shadow.
Her canvas in great part is the smooth large surface
of woodturned salad bowls—both the wide shallow
salad bowls, as well as the deep "calabash"
salad bowls.
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Deb Fanelli's Angle
Grinder
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On the table in the image above is Deb's DeWalt
four-and-a-half-inch angle grinder, laid out to show
all of its components.
The nut that holds all of the parts on the assembled
tool together is on the far left. The large disk
leaning against the tool is the back-up pad. On the
far right is her 36-grit disk.
Notice that her 36-grit disk is a worn one and is
somewhat rounded, especially on the outer edge. It has
also gotten dark on that outer edge because, as it is
used, it cakes with the oils of the woods. This is
the ideal disk for the effects that Deb wants to
produce—the simultaneous bold cuts with striking
burned shadows that are her pyrosculpture process.
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Dotted and Tangled
Utensils on Leaf Board |
Deb pairs her pyrosculpture salad bowls with utensils
she carves. Some she carves into gracefully dynamic
leaves, worked with the angle grinder as she does the
bowls, while others she carves into bold, twisted
shapes, which she calls her "tangled"
utensils. To these she adds texture usually in
the form of dots produced by making a deep burned cut
with a stone bit in a flex shaft Dremel carving tool.
She often mounts the utensils in decorative ways, and
her leaf pattern sometimes returns in variations, such
as in the background, shown above.
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Pyrosculpting a
Bowl, close-up view |
In the past we have seen a wide variety of
pyrotools—some with solid points, some with wire
tips, some temperature controlled, others not, and
some not even electric, like a knife or a nail heated
over a charcoal fire. Now we are seeing high speed
power tools being used as pyrotools, yet in the end
what really counts is always the same—the hand
of the artist who is using whatever tool.
Look for additional pyrosculptures by Deb Fanelli
—including her Salad Bowl with Concentric
Circles that you have seen in progress here—in
the exhibit of the Deb
Fanelli Salon in
the E-Museum of Pyrographic Art. You won't want to
miss it.
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Calabash Bowl with
Dotted and Tangled Utensils |
P. S. As this article goes to press, JoHannes and Deb are off to do demonstrations in Austria, Switzerland, and Denmark, and to participate in the Irish Woodturners' Guild Annual Seminar 2006.
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Detail of Tangled
Utensils |
2006, Kathleen M. Garvey Menéndez, all rights reserved.
