Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Marc Adams box making, day two

This was my second day of box making class and we made great progress. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring the connection to allow my camera to load photos to the computer and you'll just have to take my word for it.

Students today learned how to make floating panel lids, and how to install bottoms in finger jointed boxes. We began installing contrasting keys in mitered boxes, and I demonstrated how to cut a lid from the base. Students have begun doing their own expressive work in no time. I know that this would be more meaningful to my readers if you saw photos. Sorry about that. In the meantime, I am excited to be here.

Hollow form by Alan Lacer
My friend Alan Lacer is also teaching this week, and it is nice to have an opportunity to reconnect with a friend with great skill and great humor. Wouldn't it be wonderful if all folks knew the value of hands-on learning? Here at Marc Adams School of Woodworking I am with those who really share my own values.

Oh, the inconvenience of having bodies! A friend was called in to visit her son's first grade teacher. He kept squirming and falling out of his chair. It was an interruption for her important lessons as she tried to get all the children to sit still.

It seems the negligence of the body, and most particularly the negligence of the hands is the source of stupidity in American education. Anaxagoras had said that man is the wisest of all animals because he has hands and it is most perfectly clear to me, that wisdom is lost when hands and minds are forcefully deprived of the balancing that each brings to the other.

 Make, fix and create...

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