The Mid-Willamette Woodworkers Guild is hosting its annual exhibition of fine woodworking this week at the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library.
The four-day showcase will be the guild’s 40th.
It's a community that openly heckles — and worse — its homeless neighbors, many who have deep roots. And it may have a date with the Supreme Court.
It’ll also be an opportunity to tout the creativity and skill of new membership, whose recruitment guild President Kurt Mottweiler said has been a priority over the past few years.
“We’ve put a lot of effort in trying to increase it (membership),” Mottweiler said, “especially in trying to get younger people involved.”
The guild, an all-volunteer organization, has been operating for decades, providing its members an avenue to share and show off ongoing projects, as well as exchange techniques and insider scoops about where to obtain woodworking tools and materials.
This year’s annual exhibition allows members to submit up to three projects. These are often creative furniture items such as vanities, bed frames, tables, desks or even lamps that temporarily turn the library’s event room into a much more eclectic and wood-based Bed Bath & Beyond.
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It’s the biggest event of the year for the guild’s membership, according to Mottweiler, who joined the group soon after moving to Albany from Portland in early 2020, just before the pandemic.
Mottweiler, a semi-retired designer and furniture maker, spends between six and eight hours each day in the workshop behind his house designing and creating specialty film cameras. It’s a lifelong passion sustained by a fascination with analog photography.
One of his past exhibition submissions was a medium-format pinhole panoramic camera.
It’s a looker in his small workshop filled with standard woodworking fare, including sanders, band and table saws, and drill presses, along with not-so-standard equipment, such as a bead blaster and polishing lathe for metal work.
The small handmade camera boasts smooth curves and is topped with shiny golden dials. It’s one of hundreds Mottweiler has crafted into existence.
This year, along with a counter-top swivel mirror, he's submitting what he describes as a combination of a camera and clock. The circular wooden panel is designed to rotate an 8-by-10 film holder over a 12-hour period, creating a doughnut-shaped image.
But along with preparing his own work, Mottweiler was also charged this year with cataloging other projects ahead of the exhibition.
Those projects include an older furniture piece from longtime member and Corvallis resident Gary Radice. It’s the bottom half of a two-part tool chest made of cherry and sycamore.
But what’s really noteworthy is the item’s use of Japanese joinery, a method of keeping wood pieces together without glue, nails or screws. It’s also a method unusual for building furniture according to Radice, a former biology professor from Virginia who has been a guild member for eight years.
Like many of the guild’s membership, he’s retired and now has more time to refine his craft.
“I do it pretty much every day,” he said.
But the guild has also looked to expand its numbers, which has nearly doubled over the past two years, according to Radice, and now boasts 40 members. The exhibition will also be hosting a section for Crescent Valley High School shop students.
“I’m looking forward to seeing a lot of new work,” Radice said.
The show, free to the public, opens Thursday, April 25, and lasts until Sunday, April 28. Pieces can be seen in the library's event room from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Thursday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, and 1 to 5 p.m. on Sunday.
Friday's showing also includes a reception from 6 to 8 p.m., offering the public a chance to meet the artists behind the pieces.