After that, I will continue the Workshop design series as well.  I ran into a bit of a snag with that design;  I have to start the design completely over.  I no longer have access to that particular CAD system that I was designing it on, or even the CAD files for that matter.  That is a really long story that I am not going to get into here.  Once I get the design in Alibre back up to where I was before, then I will continue the article series.

Anyway, I just wanted to let everyone know what was going on.

Besides all of the visual changes, you’ll notice an open space in the upper right hand corner of the home page labeled “Featured Video”.  I am planning on some videos soon for the site and the most recent will be featured in this location.  Some of the videos will be “how to” woodworking videos filmed in the shop, and others will be design oriented.  The design videos will be Computer Aided Design (CAD) oriented, and will hopefully be helpful to some people.

Another noticeable difference is that the blog has been taken off of the home page.  Don’t worry, it’s still here.  It now has its own page on the site and can be accessed through the menu at the top of the page.  I wanted the site to be “more” than a blog, although I am still contemplating what the “more” will really be.  I just thought that it made sense, at this point, to move it off of the home page to make room for the “more”.

Feel free to look around at what I have so far.  I am always open to constructive comments if you have ideas about how something could be improved.

The only thing that I have been able to do in the workshop recently is start a couple of more projects that I have not yet finished.  Both projects are basically just shelves, but the one involves some coat hooks as well.  I will post a couple of pictures of them once they are done.  They are nothing fancy, but they are the only thing that I have to show for myself lately.

I have about two more weeks of non-woodworking business in my life, and then of course there  is Christmas in there as well, so it might be a few more weeks before I actually get into the shop.  In the meantime, though, I have begun (in my spare time) a new design for an entertainment center.  I will try and share that design process here on the Maple Grove Woodwork’s blog.

That does remind me of one other thing that I have done that is woodworking related.  I purchased some new CAD software of my own.  I know a lot of woodworkers have been using Google Sketchup (mainly because of the free price), but I decided to go a different route.  I will share a little more about that in an upcoming post.

For now, though, I apologize again for my lack of web presence lately.  I am going to try and commit to making one post a week from now on.  How’s that for a non-committal committal.  

I even did a little woodworking.  Just a little.  I made a couple more clamp racks and attached them to the wall.  Many of my clamps have been laying on bench tops or just clamped to the sides of a bench, so the additional racks will really help in staying organized.  I did not get back to the mission style lamps that I wanted to work on, but hopefully I will soon.

These are question that I pondered this weekend as I attended Artprize 2009 in Grand Rapids Michigan.  Artprize is a 2 1/2 week art competition that boasts a $250,000 prize for first place.  According to the Artprize.org website there were 1262 entries showing at 159 different venues around the downtown area of Grand Rapids.  The contest was pretty much open to anyone who had something artistic to show.  Entries ranged from small paintings to performance artists, to sculptures that needed a crane to install.

I suppose that whether something is art or not is truly in the eye of the beholder.  One mans trash is another mans art, so to speak.  Traditional woodworking has, at least in my mind, always been a trade skill or at most a craft.  I guess there has always been a very blurry line between “arts” and “crafts” which cannot be defined easily.  When I think of “art”, I think of something that cannot be done by someone without the talent to do so.

However, I certainly saw some “art” at Artprize that I don’t think would take much talent at all.   I am pretty sure that my 8 year old son could have done just as well.  I have also seen some things in the past that I cannot even fathom how it was made that are just beautiful works of art.  I consider many of the things that David Marks has made to be art.

So, I guess the answer to my questions is “I have no idea”.  Oh well.  I think that I am going to make something that I think is beautiful and enter it into next years Artprize.  Maybe I’ll win, and maybe I won’t, but either way I think it will be fun.

I really enjoyed myself as a spectator this year at Artprize.  I certainly was unable to see all of the entries, but I saw quite a few, including several woodworking projects.  One of my favorite pieces was a wooden boat made by John Hamelink.    It contains over 300 inlay pieces and took over 1500 hours to build.  Not only is this boat art, but it is usable.  He had pictures of other boats that he has built in the water.

This was an interesting piece by Thomas Verstraete.    Basically, it is a bench made out of small scrap wood.

I thought this was a cool piece of sculpture from Mike Moy.    He actually finished the piece at during the contest.  I didn’t get a chance to see him work on it, but I heard he starts out using a chainsaw to sculpt it.

• Popular Woodworking
• Wood magazine
• Fine Woodworking
• Shop Notes
• Woodsmith
• American Woodworker
• Woodworkers Journal
• Workbench magazine

Kind of crazy, I know.  It was only for about a year that I was receiving all 8 magazines at the same time.  I also bought a lot of books and videos on the subject.  I also have several episodes of New Yankee Workshop and every episode of DIY Woodworks that I recorded on VHS.  I wish I would have had the DVD burner back then.

This was all before the subject of woodworking had really hit the internet like it has now.  Now there are all kinds of free videos, blogs, podcasts, and plans right at the tips of our fingers.

I now only subscribe to two of them; Wood Magazine and Fine Woodworking.  Although I occasionally pick another one up at the newstand if I see something interesting.

Here is a great link to a list of all of the magazines that I know of. I didn’t even know some of these existed.  Check them out if you are looking for a good read.