REGISTRATION OPENS:

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 8 AT NOON

One of seven courses available for the May 9 – 12, 2024
MCA Weekend Workshop @ Haystack

Carving Impractical: Toying with Usefulness

Currently Full Waitlist Only

Instructor: Danielle Rose Byrd 
Haystack Studio: Wood
Enrollment Limit: 10
Materials Fees: $50 – $150 (TBA- See below) 
Level: All Levels 

Class Description:

In this workshop students will explore a variety of green woodworking and sculptural carving techniques using gouges, axes, power carvers, and other shop tools. An introductory vessel-ish project will build familiarity with tools and basic convex and concave shaping methods, then students will be given the opportunity to develop their own projects that explore form untethered to expectations of utility. We will be using green wood straight from the log, so a lot is possible.

Students will learn basic principles about how wood behaves, material sourcing and storage, tool sharpening, and when and where rules can be stretched. Emphasis will be placed upon collective learning, and how we can information gather to help guide the group through their individual projects. Spontaneous collaboration would be fantastic too. Let’s get weird, have some fun, and learn a few things.

Materials List + Fees: $50 – $150 – TBA 

The costs for this workshop are currently being determined and will be disclosed shortly.

About The Instructor-

Danielle is a primarily self-taught wood sculptor and carver from Bar Harbor, Maine. At College of the Atlantic she explored music and sound sculpture, and while building a handmade fiddle-ish instrument constructed from burn pile wood found on campus, began carving scraps into spoons. She now makes functional and non-functional work including vessels, objects, and home furnishings.

Chronic illness has shaped much of their practice and techniques, encouraging them to develop hybrid methods that allow them to push the boundaries of vessel and abstract forms while also honoring the limits of their body. This circumstance has presented a platform from which to envision a new way of thinking about how our bodies relate to production and worth. They often use carved texture as a visual history of the force used to create each piece, suggesting the inherent trauma of equating work to worth, and touches on themes of resilience, perceived value, ableism, belonging, and power structures.

She has written for Fine Woodworking, Mortise & Tenon Magazine, Popular Woodworking, and from 2014-17 was a member of Lie-Nielsen Toolworks hand tool events, traveling the country teaching hand tool woodworking fundamentals. In 2018 she was awarded the Belvedere Handcraft Fellowship from the Maine Arts Commission. Her first book, The Handcarved Bowl, was published in 2021.