This piece launched my career. Inclusion in what would become the “Challenge” exhibitions at the Wood Turning Center, Spacelander was acknowledged with a Merit Award, in (the first) Turned Object Show. It had been organized by Albert LeCoff, as a national juried competition and book, Amaranth Gallery and Workshop, Philadelphia, PA, October 11 – 13, 1981 with tour. Juried by David Ellsworth and Rudy Osolni, this was the first exhibition to be devoted strictly to wood turned objects. LeCoff and Ellsworth were to be two of the people who would dramatically nature of contemporary woodturning. I remember exactly where I was standing when the “Gods of Woodturning” called me about inclusion on the exhibition.

The Turned Object exhibition brought me into contact with a small group of other people who had been identified as making up this new field, and it gave me impetus to make more work that could be mailed, rather than furniture that always alluded to Wendell Castle, the big tree in whose shadow nothing grew well.