In the special post below, woodworking student Tuhina Rasche writes about the lessons she’s learned–and the stories she’s heard–from working with wood at Sawtooth.
In the special post below, woodworking student Tuhina Rasche writes about the lessons she’s learned–and the stories she’s heard–from working with wood at Sawtooth.
Dane Snodgrass’ One Board Bow class had two eager students: Blake and me. Dane, an expert bowyer, guided Blake and me in creating our own functional bows out of a single piece of red oak. What was terrifying and exciting about this class was that we constructed the bow with the materials we would have on us in the great outdoors. Instead of using rulers for measurements, we had to rely on handspans, finger lengths, and eyesight. We had to trust ourselves in forming and shaping the piece of red oak that would become our companion for the next several weeks. In those weeks, the red oak would also form and shape us.
Bows create a beautiful curve, yet getting that curve takes patience, care, and attention to the wood. Blake and I would spend much of the first class working with the red oak to get it to the width where it would reveal its nimbleness to us. We couldn’t force that revelation, though. Blake and I would file and sand. We would look closely at the width. We would mark with pencil where there were still patches of thickness. We would file and sand again. Blake and I couldn’t force the red oak to bend. We had to build a relationship with the wood with which we were working. We also had to recognize how the wood was working with us.
Getting to see the curve of a bow is the closest thing I’ve experienced to magic. It was also outright terrifying, not knowing what would happen when the string was pushed over the notches, then having my heart skip a beat (or several) at the first tentative draw of the string. I was fearful that the red oak would snap into two pieces, and that my heart would break along with it.
My heart did not break on the first draw. I was overcome with awe the first time I saw the curve of the bow. The red oak and I, after weeks of back-and-forth conversation, of trying to understand one another in the filing, sanding, and eyeing the width, had a new understanding with one another. In shaping the limbs of the bow, the red oak shaped my sense of magic and wonder in working with wood.
Over the course of the class, the time in the woodshop became more than just a class. Dane, Blake, and I would share stories with one another. Stories of what brought us to making a bow. Stories of our lives outside Sawtooth’s woodworking shop. Stories of what shaped and formed us as we shaped and formed the wood in front of us. As we were forming the wood into its new formation, we were forming a beautiful little community, sharing stories with the wood and with one another.
From a Taste of Art: Cutting Boards
Tuhina’s turned candlestick
Foot stool crafted by Tuhina in a woodworking class
In my day-to-day life, I help people tell stories, which then encourages people in their communities to live out their stories together. My profession is both weird and wondrous, watching people come together to try to be their best selves for one another and for themselves. Sharing those stories with Dane and Blake, and reflecting on my other experiences at Sawtooth, have taught me about the expansiveness and beauty of storytelling and creativity through the artistic process.
Lately, I have spent many hours in Sawtooth’s woodworking and woodturning studios, for classes that teach me how to turn bowls or build benches, and learning more about the stories that wood shares with us. I didn’t anticipate such profound epiphanies to come through this relationship with wood; yet the more time I spend with the material, I don’t experience it as me working with the wood. I’ve learned to view it as an experience of mutuality, with the wood and me working together in a partnership to create a tactile element of this unique relationship.
My time in Sawtooth’s woodworking shop has also gifted me with experiential stories. I’m continuing to learn so much about the stories that wood tells us, the metaphors that can teach us about how to be with one another in community. I’m learning more about the stories of woodgrain, how it expands outward with lived experiences. I’m better understanding the stories wood tells us as something that is learned and co-created. I am especially humbled as wood has so much to teach us about care, attention, and the beauty of creating a curve and living and creating in community.
Blake and Tuhina with their finished bows
