The Martha Stewart Show !

Well, I was ON the Martha Stewart Show yesterday, Jan. 17th. The segment they shot up here on Nov 2nd, of me making a mahogany bowl, using all the tools, and talking about some finished pieces, was just fabulous. (Thanks Laurie, and Gary!!!) And on the live set, Martha had examples of all the tools, a rough zebrawood block, and 6 finished bowls, each a different wood. After they showed the taped segment, we were "live", Martha showing each bowl on the set table, and I was sitting right nearby, and we were chatting about each piece, quite naturally. It was very cool, and turned out great! I was thrilled to meet Martha just briefly before and after the segment, and she is very attractive, gracious, and poised.
Being on TV is a new experience for me, all the bustling around, getting make-up. They dont have any room for errors- it is done live and what you see and hear is what you get.
On-set were 6 bowls= cocobolo, s. american mahogany (the same one I had done for the upstate shoot), African padauk, African zebrawood, red elm, and western bigleaf maple. The bowls looked great on the mostly white marble table.
Everyone on the Martha team was very friendly and complimentary and made you feel at ease even though there is an electricity of anticipation and pressure of putting on a live TV show each day, with a continuing change of people coming on the show (like me), who are unknown and untested entities, ofcourse. I am pretty sure that Vaia, the smart and attractive young woman who was my guide, was probably holding her breath when it came time for me to reply to the question Martha was going to ask me after the taped segment.... I sure didn't want to screw it up, not on national TV !! And naturally I wanted to do a good job for Martha.
It went fine. I was lucky.
The bowls, and my work, speak pretty well for themselves just by being there. It's always been about my work, for me, not about ME. But once invited, boy, you better show up, and hopefully do a good job. Friends tell me I aced it. I felt fine about it, and very relieved when it was over. So, what's next?
Thank you, Martha!! And thanks to Vaia, and Elie, and Joey, and everyone at the Show. It was a wonderful experience and all of you are just GREAT !!! kip

cocobolo

I love cocobolo. Just finished a small bowl with ever-so-slight curving. It sanded up beautifully and is smooth as glass at 320 grit. It oils up very nicely and doesn't "spot" going into the grain the way s. american mahogany seems to so that you have to keep drying, and drying, and rubbing, and even then can be a little spotty.
The past month has been busy. A film crew from the Martha Stewart Show was here all day on Friday Nov. 2nd, shooting the entire process of making a sculptural bowl, from taking a block off the stack, to chain-sawing the edges, and every step in between until 320 grit and signing then oiling the piece. Luckily my assistant Natasha got back from a job in NYCity in time for lunch with the crew, and she was able to get into the action and did most of the sanding on the mahogany piece we were working on.
The producer, Laurie Hepburn, I think has 3 or 4 Emmys to her credit, as does the cameraman, Gary Nardilla. The next day I googled Gary, and saw he'd done shoots of Madonna, and also Mariel Hemingway, WOW !! He did many very close-in shots of the tools blasting sawdust all over the place. Also, many "beauty shots" of finished work. I felt I did poorly, when talking about my work and so on, but Laurie assured me it went OK and would be fine through the magic of editing. I don't know when the segment will show. People have told me it's a real big deal to be featured on the Martha Show, and they've asked ominously, "Are you ready?"
I should really get to work and stack up some inventory in case people start calling me out of the blue. I can only make so many bowls in a year, so..... I still haven't gotten a digital camera or any photos up anywhere. But I did just register a domain name... http://www.kipeggert.com/ which should be "up" in 2 days, and I think I can put a brief description of what I do on the site, and an email address as well... kipeggert@yahoo.com Small but necessary steps, like sanding.

spalted red elm with wormholes

What a terrific piece of wood I've been working on. It came from my Raleigh, N.C. wood dealer awhile back, NC Wood, Gary Davis. He's on ebay. He has a lot of great wood and is very reliable to deal with. It started out a large block, and I shaped it the usual way...
I had thought I'd do another cocobolo, but cocobolo is difficult to work with, and although the red elm is 3x as large, it'll be easier. Much easier. I remember elm from growing up. We sometimes burned elm in our house of many fireplaces. It was the wood that is nearly impossible to split. The flip side of that difficulty is that it seems stable and not likely to crack and split randomly on its own.
I took 4 bowls to my Rhinebeck Farmer Market this Sunday (where i sell cheese) but technically, NOT bowls. There was a lot of interest in them, as the fall craft fair was at the fairgrounds, and a lot of people going to the craft fair, stopped by the farmer market. I doubt there were any wood bowls at the craft fair as interesting as mine, as I've been to it and seen only "turned" pieces. It is obvious to anyone that my work is NOT turned.
The purpleheart and cocobolo bowls caught a lot of eyes and remarks, as well as the pair of western bigleaf maple bowls that came to me in triangles out of the same large block.
I can't wait to get a digital camera and load some photos on this blog site. Maybe by the time I finish this red elm piece, by the end of the weekend. The spalting and worm-holes are very cool. More about spalting on a later date. As they say on TV, "stay tuned."

canarywood bowl

It was almost too hot to work today, like, 90 degrees and muggy. But I wanted to finish up this canarywood piece, and that meant, 120grit, then 180, 240, and 320. Back and forth to my barn/shop/studio... Woodworkers have shops, artists have studios, I am (shrug) kind of in-between. I never call myself an "artist" though. Canarywood is very easy to work with- not too hard, not too soft, quite smoooooth, sometimes has a great figure if it has had any wormhole action (which this one had none....) Martha Stewart has one of my canarywood bowls in her kitchen. (a feather in my cap and a nice bowl in her kitchen)
I LOVE the Martha people. They all sound so enthusiastic and perky and friendly.
So a day of sanding, done. And the bowl, signed, dated, and a 1st coat of Behlen's Salad Bowl clear finish, done. Maybe i'll do a cocobolo piece next. I have a lot of wood blocks to choose from. And that is a good thing.

East Coast heat

it's a heat wave, no doubt about it. here on sept. 26th, '07, it is around 90 degrees. since it will only turn cooler, and the price of oil is skyhigh, all windows are open to let the heat in. it would be great to not turn up the thermostat until october.
i am working on a canarywood block, right now at 80 grit. it's rather plain, but nevertheless a sweet piece of wood. too hot today to finish it= 120, 180, 240, 320 grit. i make sculptural bowls. soon i will post some photos and links on this site, but since this is my first blog ever, and i don't even own a digital camera, i have some footwork to do.
i'd like to go over to my favorite local watershed... (it's been rather dry this summer) and check out some pools and see if there are any trout swimming around. that, and this time of year there are sometimes gangs of cedar waxwings chomping up on berries and insects, swooping across the stream, conducting flight maneuvers that pilots can only dream about.