Lawrence Gehl
Viroqua, Wisconsin
 

When Lawrence Gehl was ten years old, his dad gave him an electric jig saw, and thus began his love of working with wood.  The 65-year-old artist, who won the People’s Choice Award at the 2008 Driftless Area Art Festival, works on segmented bowls and other pieces in his spare time, but looks forward to retirement when he can devote full time to his art.

Gehl says that a single bowl may be made of 200 to 300 individual segments of exotic and domestic hardwood.  Each bowl takes between 15 and 20 hours of work, and one that he just finished, using southwestern Indian designs, took him at least 40 hours.  “I refuse to be rushed,” he says.

Because the works are so intricate, he says, “People often mistake my bowls for pottery,” so he enjoys showing them how he works with the wood. For each bowl or vase he prepares a blueprint, often inspired by designs he finds in two books, Segmented Turning by Ron Hampton and Woodturning
 with Ray Allen by Dale L. Nish.

No two bowls or vases are the same, owing to the variety in the natural colors of the woods, bought from cabinetmakers and hardwood outlets and coming from the U.S. as well as from round the world. And sometimes the wood itself inspires the form and design it will finally take.

The process of making a bowl or vase is multi-phased. Various shapes and sizes of wood pieces are glued into rings and stacked in graduated layers to be glued again and turned on a woodturning lathe. Then the wood is sealed with a wood sealer, sanded with 80 to 400-grit sandpaper, and given two or three coats of sealer or varnish. The final coat is eventually sanded down with 12,000-grit sandpaper, buffed, and given a coat of Cordoba wax, resulting in a lovely and protective gloss that enhances the natural and varied colors of the woods.

 A member of the Coulee Region Wood Turners, he is helped by his apprentice and student, Steve Sevede, whom he met two years ago at a tools demonstration. “I learn from him and he learns from me,” says Gehl, who added, I never knew I had this type of talent.” As a boy he had built model cars from kits, then graduated to building and flying a radio-controlled airplane, and watching his carpenter grandfather build barns.

Then, ten years ago, Gehl’s dad gave him a table saw, and he built birdhouses, found a plans book, and began creating other things. He has since filled his rural Viroqua wood working shop with 15 other power tools – sanders, lathes, saws, polishers, etc., -- all paid for by the sale of his work, which includes both the fine segmented bowls and vases as well as model trucks, golf carts and motorcycles. Most of his sales are through word-of-mouth contacts, although he does a limited amount of commission work, “if and when I get to it.”

A 1998 family reunion gave his hobby a jump start, when he made items as prizes: a dump truck, a small decorative sleigh, and rooster-shaped recipe holders. Two years later he made more pieces as raffle items to help cover reunion expenses. And then in 2005 he began working weekends and evenings making tiny bowls, jewelry boxes and other fine art  pieces, mostly to be donated to benefit auctions.

Gehl continues to donate items, for example, for the Freeman Lutheran Church’s Christmas gift exchange. “I enjoy seeing people’s eyes light up” when they receive a jewelry box, or a truck, or any of the other pieces he creates. His wife, Sharon, a quilter who donates her work through the Lutheran World Relief Fund, enjoys displaying his work throughout their home.

Gehl’s pieces have found their way around the country, with dump trucks sent to Alaska, South Dakota and New York; a carousel to Montana; golf carts to Michigan, Florida and Illinois; and bowls and vases to Illinois and all over Wisconsin. 2008 was his first participation in the Driftless Area Art Festival.

lgehl@mwt.net
608-675-3715