Photos by Wes Kroninger
Woodturner Devon Palmer is a patient man. Some of his pieces take up to five years to season and become art.
“When I make a wooden bowl, I’ll rough it out and leave it extra thick so that when it dries and warps, I can get a perfectly round circle out of it,” Palmer says. “So I have 300 to 400 bowls sitting down in the basement, just slowly drying over the course of five years.”
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Wooden bowls are Palmer’s bread and butter, but his touch extends to platters, vases, pepper mills and cups. He’s a local favorite at ComFest, and he mentors other newbies in the craft of woodturning.
“They call it ‘the practice of woodturning’ because it very much is a lot of practice,” says Palmer. “That’s typically why you see mentoring organizations associated with woodturning – because the initial ramp-up of the motor skills you have to develop is pretty high.”
On a snowy day in February, Palmer turns his 1,000th piece at his relatively new studio at the Columbus Idea Foundry. Looking on are his two Golden Retrievers, Bo and Uma. While he turns his work on an industrial lathe he lovingly named Xena – “because all things of beauty, power and grace are female” – he talks about his life as an IT specialist for Schottenstein’s Value City Furniture by day and a woodturner by night.
“Before I even walk in the door, I’ve put in a full 40 hours,” Palmer says. “Given the fact that I have several neighboring studios around (at the foundry) and many of the people here that do the same thing, we all kind of provide a social network, so not only do we work, but we play together as well, and play is a huge part of the creative business.”
Some might think there is little value in the ash trees destroyed by the invasion of the emerald ash borer over the last few years, but in Palmer’s hands, the holes the insects make enhance the delicacy of the bowl.
“So many times, our self-received flaws are the things that make us interesting and beautiful. Had this wood not had been infested by the borer, would it be this interesting? Would it be this special?” Turning the ash-infested wood into art, he says, “gives it value and gives it power.”
Family and tradition are both important to Palmer. His mother was a woodcarver, his father a cabinetmaker. While Palmer studied airplane mechanics in college and transitioned his skills into a career in IT systems, he felt out of touch with his blue-collar heritage.
In 2004, he traveled back home to Indiana and took up woodturning with his father. Though he moved to Columbus, a town he loved because of its creative vibe, he feels connected to his family when he makes a wooden bowl because it symbolizes breaking bread and time with his family. It also reconnects him to his childhood passion for chainsaws and his duties on the family farm.
“We used to heat our farmhouse with wood, and I was running a chainsaw at 10,” Palmer says. “That was one of the things that kind of made a segue into what I do now.”
Aside from the ash, Palmer looks for hardwoods of any type, but never needs to harvest trees on his own. All of his raw wood is donated from areas that needed to be cleared, such as the path for the new Emerald Parkway in Dublin. He calls his wood stock “reclaimed urban forest” and, when he can, he gives back to donors by making special pieces from the donated wood.
Some might pass over reclaimed wood as too inconsistent a material. Palmer sees nothing but opportunities.
“Some of these pieces of wood might not be all that awesome, but when you frame them and give them a purpose and play to their strengths, because really Mother Nature does all the work, all I have to do is carve away and show what she’s done,” he says.
Cindy Gaillard is an Emmy award-winning producer with WOSU Public Media. Learn more about the weekly arts and culture magazine show Broad & High at www.wosu.org/broadandhigh.
