After 2 decades of artistic pursuits in various mediums such as music, painting and drawing, I decided to get into wood turning a little over a year ago at the behest of my father, Jeffrey Clark, who has been at it for over 30 years. After some introductory courses in turning from local artists Allen Leland and Bill Wallace, I quickly picked up a solid aptitude for spindle and bowl turning. Within a few months I was contributing to production and design at my father’s business, JNC Woodworks.
To date I have completed several innovative designs for a number of different products including bowls, candy dishes, jewelry boxes, platters, crochet hooks, various kitchen utensils and toiletry items. I have a preference for using single wood blanks or composites of separate pieces of the same species arranged to provide varying grain patterns. My creative process is organic, wherein I typically use only minimal planning of any particular design and will typically adapt the work to whatever anomalies may occur in the process. It is also very rare that I ever copy a particular design and, therefore, most of my pieces are one-of-a-kind even among similar items. Additionally I was able to pick up some training in how to do stone resin inlay from George Sudermann of the Piedmont Triad Woodturner’s Association and have added inlay to several of both my father’s and my own pieces.
