BLAKE PATTERSON — WOOD ARTIST
Growing up in Royal Oak, Michigan, Blake Patterson played with electricity, chemicals, motors, model airplanes, and the local fauna. In 10th grade he took bassoon lessons, and two years later tooted with six orchestras and three bands. After engineering and math degrees at the University of Michigan, he answered JFK’s call, joined the Peace Corps, and taught two years at the University of Ife in Nigeria. He earned a Ph.D. in physics at UC Berkeley, but his first job was second bassoonist in the New Jersey Symphony, where he met his lovely wife, Ellen Jackson. He played with many fine New Jersey orchestras, including twenty years with the Garden State Philharmonic and the Metro Lyric Opera.
After
he joined Bell Labs, Blake and Ellen bought a 30-room fixer-upper in Rumson,
NJ, where they hosted dozens of
chamber-music concerts. When they re-decorated the master bath, Ellen asked his
favorite color: “Wood!” They covered the walls with thin pine strips. They
refinished just about every other square inch inside that home. Blake gained
lots of on-the-job problem-solving experience maintaining two acres and old
structural, electrical, plumbing, and heating systems. He built a dock, grape
arbor, pergola, railings, furniture, etc. They raised two fine people: Grant,
who was Rumson’s 2002 valedictorian and is now a computer engineer in Oakland,
CA, and Greer, who is a fine soprano and
teaches bilingual students in a Brooklyn elementary
school.
In 2 ... view more »
BLAKE PATTERSON — WOOD ARTIST
Growing up in Royal Oak, Michigan, Blake Patterson played with electricity, chemicals, motors, model airplanes, and the local fauna. In 10th grade he took bassoon lessons, and two years later tooted with six orchestras and three bands. After engineering and math degrees at the University of Michigan, he answered JFK’s call, joined the Peace Corps, and taught two years at the University of Ife in Nigeria. He earned a Ph.D. in physics at UC Berkeley, but his first job was second bassoonist in the New Jersey Symphony, where he met his lovely wife, Ellen Jackson. He played with many fine New Jersey orchestras, including twenty years with the Garden State Philharmonic and the Metro Lyric Opera.
After
he joined Bell Labs, Blake and Ellen bought a 30-room fixer-upper in Rumson,
NJ, where they hosted dozens of
chamber-music concerts. When they re-decorated the master bath, Ellen asked his
favorite color: “Wood!” They covered the walls with thin pine strips. They
refinished just about every other square inch inside that home. Blake gained
lots of on-the-job problem-solving experience maintaining two acres and old
structural, electrical, plumbing, and heating systems. He built a dock, grape
arbor, pergola, railings, furniture, etc. They raised two fine people: Grant,
who was Rumson’s 2002 valedictorian and is now a computer engineer in Oakland,
CA, and Greer, who is a fine soprano and
teaches bilingual students in a Brooklyn elementary
school.
In 2007 the Jackson-Pattersons moved to a new, low-maintenance condo in the Greenbriar Falls senior complex in Tinton Falls, NJ. At a friend’s suggestion, Blake bought an inexpensive lathe that he used to make a few dowels. He later struggled to turn a large log into a small bowl and lots of sawdust. The inefficiency and danger of that effort prompted him to glue together a few pieces of wood into a crude bowl shape that was easier to carve while making less sawdust. He had re-invented the technique of “segmented” wood-turning. Roughly one in a hundred turners are “segmenters;” the other 99 start with one piece of wood. Experienced segmenter George Nazareth of New England writes on-line that a segmenter must be precise,
meticulous, patient, and “a little nuts.”
Largely
self-taught, Blake draws on his home-maintenance skill to improve the
bowl-making process, along with ideas and advice from experienced turners and
books. Some of the fun of turning bowls is creating “jigs” that make the
process safer, faster, and more accurate.
A
write-up on making segmented bowls at //phinds.com/bowls/ “making the bowls” suggests
its complexity and why it takes Blake 5 to 30 hours to complete one. Blake’s
website is www.blakesbowls.com.
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