Donald Derry was born in 1956 in Othello, Washington and educated at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington. His works are in many collections throughout the USA. He has exhibited extensively and has won numerous awards. Don is a member of the AAW and demonstrated at the AAW National Symposiums in 2004 in Orlando, Florida and in 2005 in Overland Park, Kansas.
Donald has been a woodworker for 35 years. Initially he produced fine furniture, cabinets and guitars. In 1993 he began to teach himself the craft of woodturning. In 1994 he attended the AAW Symposium and after viewing the Instant Gallery he noted that two artistic areas were not represented. These were vibrant colors and optical quality finishing which he explored and quite successfully mastered. More often than not his pieces are thought to be Fine Art Glass and not finely crafted wood.
Presently Don is working with Chinese Elm because the open grain structure and neutral wood tones lend well to the coloring process he is developing. The colors used are aniline dyes and metallic pigments. Don states that “coloring, finishing and polishing easily take more time than the woodturning.”
Watching Mr Derry last Thursday was interesting. Normally I would have been disappointed that there was no turning done or any wood being worked on but I could not help being fascinated by his demo. Use of color and ability to look at something from a unique point of view are the biggest things I took away from last Thursday. Thank you again Mr Derry and I cant wait to see you again soon.
I agree that it was a very informative presentation. Sometimes we just want to turn something without some thought of what the end result will be. That’s works for some people, but not me.
And to think the club’s new Powermatic lathe was set up and ready to go and it didn’t even get turned on during the demo.