Pope Lawrence

Woodturning artist and Photographer

I focus upon two very different media in my artwork: woodturning and photography. I have been working in these media for many decades in various environments. My main interests, however, are FORM and NEGATIVE SPACE.  In woodturning and photography, form is the main consideration that I seek to bring out and express. Woodturning is three dimensional, while photography is two dimensional, but both are vehicles of expression, and at their best, elicit an emotional response from viewers. I find great pleasure in exploiting negative spaces that often occur in the wood that I use, often times an unintended “mistake” becomes the enhancement that makes the piece “sing”.

I am quite fortunate in having formal education in the arts. I have a year and a half of training in photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology and a BA in Arts and Crafts from New Mexico Highlands University. I also worked as a lighting technician in New York, and later at Santa Fe Opera. For many years I worked as a furniture maker at various places in New Mexico, Sweden and Virginia.

I also worked many years in telecommunications and information technology at Bell Atlantic Paging, Washington State University and the University of Vermont before coming to Merced where I have been afforded the luxury of time to further explore work in my chosen fields of art.