June 2018 Topic

Three Legged Bowl

Rebecca DeGroot

 

21462276 10159324775730156 268949619076643970 n21587333 10159331146335156 1050458557295376832 oRebecca DeGroot was born and raised with her three brothers in Michigan. With their woodworking father and a stay at home artist mother, her and her brothers have never been short of inspiration. Rebecca and her brothers were homeschooled from an early age, therefore given the opportunity to explore their forty acres and appreciate the nature and wildlife. Throughout her young life, she developed her love of teaching and sharing information with others. She later went on to pursue an education at Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University in Grand Rapids, MI. After six years and an assortment of interesting twists and turns, she gained two bachelor’s degrees; one in Art education and the other in Sculpture and Functional Art. Before graduation, she received an offer to teach high school art at a school in Houston, Texas. The summer after graduation, she packed her things and made her way down to Texas to start this new and exciting chapter of her life. While it has been a challenge these past four years, Rebecca has always found time in her busy teaching schedule to create her own art. She now juggles teaching art, demonstrating woodworking and woodturning, and maintaining the regular production of her own gallery work. Eventually, Rebecca would like to focus all of her time on demonstrating and creating her own work, but we will have to wait and see when that dream will be made into a reality.

At the meeting, Rebecca will be demonstrating design basic concepts and the steps to create a three-legged bowl in her own style. She will be showing her own process of basic bowl turning, plotting an oversized foot, drilling and power carving the foot into “hips”, turning the spindles for the legs, cutting the legs apart, using splines to reinforce the leg joints, then reassembling the parts into a finished piece. If there’s time left over, she can go over embellishment techniques such as applying TransTint dyes, gold leafing, pyrography, and unexpected additive carved components.