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Master
Wood Turner
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Erwood Station Crafts
Gallery
and Tearooms, Builth Wells Powys Tel: 01982 560674 |
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Artistic woodturning and owning a craft centre and gallery is Alan Cunningham's second career. Formerly teaching music in Leicestershire schools for fifteen years, it was not until teaching lost its charm that he considered turning a minor hobby into his new profession. | |||
| Alan and his wife moved to Mid Wales in 1984 and bought a derelict rural GWR railway station on the banks of the river Wye, surrounded by the rolling hills of Radnorshire. The re-building of the station offices and the station-master's bungalow became a personal vision, which has developed into an important centre for artists and craftspeople. The centre has nearly 20,000 visitors a year from all over the world. It provides a showroom, railway carriage gallery for 'Platform 1' arts and crafts association, daily woodturning demonstrations and monthly art exhibitions. | ||||
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| Alan is a highly accomplished and respected artistic woodturner. His work has its own distinctive style, inspired directly from the wood. The first creative decision is often implemented with the chainsaw, |
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| interesting features often dictating the dimension and style of the hollow form or bowl; knots, burrs, spalting, interesting holes (even wormholes), the possibility of natural edges, influence the development of the final piece. | ||||
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Combining the training
of his first profession, Alan runs tailor-made woodturning courses for individual
students in his well-equipped studio. Alan feels that living and working in his present environment, where he is constantly inspired by the intimate landscape of Mid-Wales, has become essential to his creative development. |
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