Meet Alex Bond | Woodturner

We had the good fortune of connecting with Alex Bond and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Alex, what is a piece of conventional advice you disagree with?
“Be patient and good things will come.’

Three and a half years ago I purchased a dusty old Craftsman lathe from Craigslist, which officially launched my career as a woodturner. Today, I am a professional and award-winning woodturner exhibiting in two local galleries and three national galleries. And, I am opening a woodturning school in downtown Mancos, Colorado in order to create opportunities for the community to connect to the world through woodturning. Needless to say, a lot has happened in a short amount of time. Of the many traits that served as catalysts for my growth as an artist, patience was not one of them.

My decision to embrace a creative life occurred in concert with the difficult and necessary decision to embrace a sober life. When I decided to quit drinking and using drugs, I had the opportunity to learn who I was. I learned what traits were hiding under the shell of adulthood cast upon me by a world intent on using me for profit. Without alcohol to distort my self-image, I learned that I had a fire for life. I discovered a tenacity for creativity and art. Like a sculptural form hiding beneath stone or wood, I could see layers of life begging to be carved away into dust, revealing something extraordinary in the process. I woke up before the sun and got to work; I spent every hour I could learning the beautiful art of woodturning. I took classes, built a workshop, and dedicated at least one portion of every single day to advancing my experience with woodturning.

Of course, patience played a role in many micro moments. The green wood I carve needs to dry over a period of several months, demanding a high degree of patience. Patience plays a role in setting a balanced bevel, measuring a tenon, and in many small moments throughout the artistic process. From a 30,000 foot level, however, it was the reciprocal of patience that I value most in my evolution as a maker. Tenacity and fire are the blade and chisel of my role as an artist. And as a maker, good things don’t just come into our life- we build, carve, chisel, grind, and sand things into their final form.

Instead of saying ‘be patient and good things will come,’ I say ‘be tenacious and create good things.’

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Picasso said “all children are born artists; the trouble is holding onto the artist through adulthood.”

I was born to a family of artists. As a child, the artist in me was alive and well and played naked and proud in the world, unclothed by the suffocating blanket of adulthood. My artist lived in nature. My artist lived in my own wide and glowing eyes, fixated on a world of seemingly endless beauty. My artist was full of life and madly in love.

Beginning in public school and persisting through early adulthood, layers of bureaucracy were smeared upon my artist by a society intent on monetizing my existence. I initially became obsessed with grades, then money, and eventually drugs and alcohol. As a young adult, my artist became buried by a toxic stagnation of society’s most crippling poisons, including drug addiction, alcoholism, and a corporate desk job.

Eventually, my lifestyle choices hit rock bottom and I decided to embrace a sober life. Sobriety offered the opportunity to experience new parts of myself, especially the artist I knew and loved as a child. Sobriety shined a spotlight on a version of myself hidden deep inside; something beautiful, inviting, and inspiring-something artistic- became illuminated.

Like the sculptor who sees a form hidden inside a piece of stone or wood, the process of revealing the finished form was (and continues to be) defined by tremendously hard work. I began to fill my days with the hard labor of the artistic process. Sawing, chiseling, grinding, cutting, shaping, and sanding filled the hours of my days. I saved money tenaciously and spent it on art workshops, apprenticeships, equipment and tools, and a workshop. The wood shavings that blanketed the floor of my workshop became reminiscent of the layers of toxic stagnation that buried my human form.

Today, I am a metal artist and stone sculptor, and am most widely known for my experience as a woodturner and woodturning instructor. I create original bowls and hollow form vessels from locally harvested Colorado trees. Although I appreciate the story told by any part of any tree, my specialty is carving trees with knots, fissures, and, of course, burls. Scientifically, a burl is a trees illustration of its own resilience to the stress of its environment. A burl is a mural of survival and perseverance written by a tree.

As a woodturner, I relate to the burl: our beauty is formed as a product of our struggle in life and not in spite of it. Like the burl, I cherish my past struggles; my story of drug addiction and alcoholism is like the drought or insect invasion that triggers the matrices of a burl to illustrate its breathtaking mural. As an artist, part of what makes me unique is focusing my artistic lens on the portions of a tree labeled as sick, dying, gross, or just plain weird. I have reputation for chucking up some of the biggest and ugliest burls in the forest and finding something beautiful hiding inside.

The vessels that I create tell a story of resilience and strength. As the woodturner, my job is to remove the outer layers of bark and wood in order to transform the piece into its most artistic, child-like, and beautiful form. In the process of carving, the tree transforms me into my artist. It brings me back to my childhood. I transform the tree. The tree transforms me.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Mancos, Colorado is a special place; a small country town nestled at the intersection of the mountains and the desert. The artists, cowboys, farmers, and ranchers that call Mancos home are united by a love for the land. As a result, I take friends deep into the wild places of the La Plata mountains in the summer and fall. In the winter and spring, the endless desert, especially Sand Canyon, is a great place to explore. Both the mountains and desert offer endless hiking, biking, and of course my favorite outdoor activity- looking for burls!

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My shoutout is dedicated to my wife, Alana. Alana is the water that balances my fire. She is steady and nourishing. Humble and selfless. Alana is the scaffolding that holds my creative career in place.

Alana and I have been together for `13 years, married for nearly 4. We have been partners through adventure, living abroad, bicycling across the country (3 times!), urban life, country life, single life, married life, and, most recently, parenthood. My relationship with creativity can be centered around myself; Alana is a role model for sharing my process with others and using art to connect instead of withdraw. From giving birth to our son next to a raging winter fire to killing all the scariest spiders in the house, Alana is a source of inspirational power. She is an absolute goddess. My hero.

Thanks for all your support Alana. You are truly amazing and you deserve a shoutout for every second I am privileged to share with you!!!

Website: www.theboysandburlsclub.com

Instagram: @theboysandburlsclub

Image Credits
I took all the photos