Joaz Hill, ShapeShifter Woodturning, Stonington. At Hill's studio, natural-edge bowls stand next to onion-shaped urns, vases, and goblets with stems as slender as daffodils. "The forms are dictated by the wood," Hill, 58, explains, "but I'm also inspired by nature."
Hill's turned vessels, buffed to a sheen, show off the rich grains of cherry, ash, maple, and walnut - all domestic woods - as well as the bold colors and textures of exotic ebony, rosewood, and Australian malle. He works with small blocks of wood as well as burls - the tumor-like bulges found on some tree trunks. To a woodturner, these imperfect spheres are uncut jewels that invite exploration.
"I let the burl talk to me," he says. "You never know what's inside." He has found bullets and fencing embedded in some, but mostly, "once you start turning, you find beauty - it's an addiction."
Twenty years ago Hill arrived in Stonington, "via New Mexico, via Arkansas." A former carpenter and cabinetmaker, he now makes his living operating a wholesale seafood business. He left cabinetmaking because he "got tired of squares" and insists that woodturning is a hobby. If so, it's one that he takes seriously enough to have pursued for 15 years, taking occasional courses at Haystack and achieving enough proficiency to teach private students, including former cabinetmakers.
Bruce Bulger, cabinetmaker/artist/illustrator, Village of Deer Isle. Bruce Bulger's studio occupies the first floor of the former Deer Isle High School, a white shingle-and-clapboard building capped with a bell tower. Sculpture, furniture, landscape paintings, and figure drawings - all made by Bulger - are arranged in the gallery. Upstairs, children work on an art project at Seamark Community Arts, an arts-education organization Bulger and his wife, Holley Mead, cofounded with another couple.
