Make your own Shaker knobs.

https://gliedganzes.substack.com/p/turning-a-shaker-style-knob-on-a

An article on making your own Shaker knobs originally published in Woodwork Magazine, October 2002

boats

A memorable experience from 2017. https://gliedganzes.substack.com/p/we-built-boats Part One, preparing for the students to arrive.

the risk of cognitive surrender

An article in the New York Times tells of a study at MIT that described the effects of artificial intelligence as leading to "cognitive surrender" as students look for the easy way out. 

Whenever faced with difficult challenges, students are turning to AI to solve them rather than working out solutions in the own minds and hands. One outcome of this is related to memory as the solutions derived from using AI are not retained. Craftsmen, on the other hand, retain a catalog of hypothetical solutions in their own minds derived from their own experiences.

Free gift article.

I had a conversation yesterday with an editor from Woodcraft Magazine about the need for woodworking in schools, for all students. A link to the resultant article will be shared later.

The use of the hands is our best tool for building the intellect, for it requires us to be present and engaged.

So we do things in schools that advance the student's minds or we choose to do otherwise. While some educators are choosing to think that artificial intelligence is merely the wave of the future and that students must be trained in its use,

I suggest the future is in our own minds and hands. A distinctly different story.

The photograph is of a piece from my video, Rustic Furniture Basics, a "stump table" now in the collection the Historic Arkansas Museum.

Are we all like?

I just finished a 4 day class with adults, making inlaid boxes. It should be noted that teaching adults and children is essentially the same thing, particularly if the children have an interest in learning, as do most adults who have joined me in the wood shop.

It is all a matter of play. We experimented. We asked questions of ourselves and others. We watched for the safe operation of tools. And we made inlaid boxes. 

We maintained an atmosphere where mistakes we OK.

Adults or children, we start with our interest, as that is what we build upon. We proceed from what we know, toward what we want to find out. We move from the easy to the more difficult. We go from the simple to the complex and always from the concrete to the abstract, and back to simplify and make real.

Make, fix and create.

Creativity. Where does it come from?

https://gliedganzes.substack.com/p/creativity

Where does it come from"

Where's it going next?

Certainty and risk

 

https://gliedganzes.substack.com/p/certainty-and-risk

All hands in

This from an Op-ed I wrote for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in October 2022.

https://gliedganzes.substack.com/p/all-hands-in

Gliedganzes.substack.com Make things harder for ourselves, please.

Two great classes.

These are photos from my last two classes at the Eureka Springs School of the Arts. 

The first is beginning box making in which each student made 3 boxes in 3 days, each of a different type, and involving their own creative ideas.

The second is my pop-up cane making class based on an article I wrote for Woodwork Magazine, and using the Veritas round tenoner and walnut. The pop-up class was offered due to a large demand for the first class held earlier in the year.

Make, fix and create as though your life depends upon it. It does.

Check out my substack, gliedganzes.substack.com

Left making things of useful beauty

You may have been following the anthropic class action lawsuit in which the company has agreed to pay each publisher and author of certain pirated books, an amount split between them. I should receive a small check, though not enough to justify continuously feeding into the theft of intellectual properties that appears ongoing. The judge's ruling is such that AI will continue mining us for salable content. It happens with everything we place online, in whatever form. Are you on facebook? You've agreed to have your content stolen from you and it will be.

In contrast, we can continue to make beautiful, useful and real things. I've placed business card holders on my made in eureka springs site: https://madeineurekasprings.com/products/linden-business-card-holder

We'll truly worry about AI when it steals our jobs and we are left making things for ourselves and being enriched in many ways by the process.

Constructing a shared sense of reality.

https://gliedganzes.substack.com/p/constructing-a-shared-sense-of-reality

Books in Bloom

Books in Bloom was a literary festival here in Eureka Springs and here was my author talk from 2007. Although I've aged, think you'll find it consistent with my message of today. https://gliedganzes.substack.com/p/from-books-in-bloom

Boxes, newly finished.

Boxes, freshly oiled with Danish oil.

Magazine organizer/storage boxes.

Magazine organizer boxes. Complete instructions and plans. Part One.

Part Two is here.

https://open.substack.com/pub/gliedganzes/p/on-the-beach

Part Two and three, Jean's craftsman style bookcase

 https://open.substack.com/pub/gliedganzes/p/part-two-jeans-craftsman-style-bookcase.

https://open.substack.com/pub/gliedganzes/p/part-three-jeans-craftsman-style

Jean's Craftsman Style Bookcase

https://gliedganzes.substack.com/p/part-one-jeans-craftsman-style-bookcase More will come.

Brookfield Craft Center..

David Heim sent photos from the Brookfield Craft Center where he's starting a Wisdom of the Hands program for local kids. He hopes next to start Wisdom of the Hands style programming in their local school. A hardwood dealer donated the Birch plywood for their benches and the tools supplied at a discount price by Woodcraft Supply.

Daddy's human

Daddy's human. We learn by doing real things.

Gliedganzes.substack.com Continuing work on essays from this blog.