Michael Cooper class at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking

James Stewart

Jun 5

This week I had the great pleasure to take a week long class with Michael Cooper from North of San Francisco. It's very hard to describe Michael adequately, he's a sculptor of amazing talent and has a bit of good old-fashioned post war California tinkerer, hot-rodder and artist in him all rolled into one of the most pleasant and compact packages you'll ever meet. It doesn't hurt that he was a university professor of art for over 30 years, so he's also extremely patient. But you were never more than 5 seconds away from a smile or a funny face to break whatever tension might have crept into the artistic space.

As a pretty "flat-earth" woodworker I spent most of my previous 25 years woodworking staying in flat planes with right angle joinery. But when I heard that Michael was going to be teaching at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking I knew this was an elective I had to try. I'm certainly not a sculptor, and my design eye is still pretty nascent, but when I saw Michael's work I just had to take the opportunity to learn the techniques of how he shapes his wood.

For those of you who have never seen a Michael Cooper sculpture you really have to spend a minute just trying to get your head around "what" you're looking at first. This is definitely where form comes ahead of function, but each piece is also solidly ground in function. Michael's pieces can take months and often times years to create as he works his way through various projects. Some have taken him decades. I believe Michael mentioned that he has roughly 85 pieces in total. Many in private collections and museums, so you're not likely to bump into them randomly.

But fortunately the internet has some good examples you can look at. I added a link to a you tube video shot in the mid 70's to give you a bit of a taste of Michael's personality.

Please pardon that I grabbed all these pictures from the internet and I forgot to get appropriate references, but a quick google search of "Michael Cooper wood sculptor" will find you similar images and videos.

I also added a few of his creations that I could find photos of from the internet. The long bent wood beauty above this paragraph was for an art themed soapbox derby in the bay area in 1975. The lines are amazing and all the wooden parts were hand shaped with bent laminations. The three other pieces below all have a chair theme, but they method by which you sit varies. The middle one is powered by a souped up go-cart engine and apparently is quite fast!

The class started at 8am on Tuesday following the Memorial Day weekend and ran to Saturday. Following the introductory safety meeting Michael jumped right in with a welcome and I thought a wonderful touch for a small class of 8 students he had us sit in a circle and introduce ourselves, our experience and what we hoped to gain from this class.

Then straight after introductions Michael jumped directly into the technique. This was exactly what I came to the class for. Michael's technique of wood creations nearly all have bentwood laminations in them. Michael is also an extremely talented carver and creates amazing shapes from solid blocks of wood. But nearly all of his creations also carry these amazingly sensual curves of bentwood laminations created by stacks of thinly sliced veneer varying from 1/32 - 1/8 inch thick and then he contorts them into swooping curves in three dimensions. Twists, turns, loops, tapers, wiggles and all shapes in between are all fair game. And Michael showed us all how to do the basics. From there only our imagination was the limit and Michael was more than willing to coach, encourage, cajole and goad us into the limits of our comfort zones.

His very first demo was a challenging loop, of a thick stack of laminations that had a gently taper from wide at the bae to almost a point at the far end. Even Michael was not convinced it would make the entire bend.

Using a stack of laminations glued together both sides with glue and loosely constrained by some jigs to mark approximate locations for height and width we then all pitched in to muscle the shape into the form.

Then Michael explained the fundamental improvisation he uses to clamp all the laminations together until they dry. Instead of using clamps (which Michael pointed out would be hard to position, expensive and HEAVY) he uses only a few clamps where necessary and the rest is wrapped tightly with 1/16-1/4 inch nylon or poly rope. It's relatively inexpensive, can be cut or tied together to create whatever length you need and the nylon and poly ropes don't often stick to the glue.

The rope can also be tied loosely until you get to the desired shape squeezing just tight enough to remove any gaps in the wood and allow each layer to slide against the next layer as you contort the laminations into the desired shape. And then to add more clamping power you can add a second or third wrap after the first once the shape is in final position.

The glues of choice for Michael are the plastic resin glues. You can use epoxy, but it's expensive. But you should not use yellow or white wood glues. The keys are that you want a glue that has a long work time and that does not have creep (the tendency to allow the glue to slide under pressure). Whatever you use must dry rock hard.

Throughout the week Michael challenged us to some design exercises and we all had to make small wire models of our potential projects. They could be practical, or they could simply be a sculpture.

Michael also showed us the techniques of how to join one piece to another.

Michael brought in numerous small examples of his work from his assorted "parts bin" of wooden copies of mechanical parts. Imagine all of these little parts being handmade of wood into working pieces of a kinetic sculpture.

Michael then challenged us to make our own creations. I am not artistic so I kept getting hung up on trying to make my piece something that would incorporate into a piece of furniture. But the evening that we were challenged to come up with something I decided to do an internet search for wooden sculptures and found a neat little lamp made of wood in the shape of an octopus and then I decided that since the week was all about creating curves, that octopus tentacles would be the perfect practice.

The other nice thing about octopus tentacles is that they can all be different wiggles so I had free reign to twist them into whatever shape I desired. I also did not feel constrained to be perfect octopus tentacles. You will note there are no suckers and they don't taper. But I knew I wasn't a sculptor, I was just having fun. In the end, if it "evokes" an octopus I'll be happy.

Michael also showed us his techniques for shaping the lamination stacks into circles or ellipses. You usually start by smoothing the sides into square cross-sections, then take the corners off at 45 degrees to create octagons, then round over the rest with sandpaper and power tools. He was a big fan of the pneumatic tools and now I am also. It's nice having multiple pneumatic heads with different attachments rather than buying a ton of different power tools.

I haven't exactly figured out how I'm going to do the head yet, but I have a few ideas. For now a bucket head will do to give you the general idea. This week was all about the legs. Perhaps the octopus got caught in a bucket? I made 11 legs so I have three spares. I can re-arrange the legs until I get to an arrangement that I like. The test arrangement here is to try and convey movement , with two legs stretched out relatively straight forward to catch something and the other six legs splayed roughly backwards.

With such a small class of eight students this was the easiest of all of my woodworking classes to get to know people. We all exchanged e-mails and I suspect we will run into each other again. We had some very experienced craftsman in our class. One of the students was really a master in his own right, he owns a custom woodworking business and has high end clients. He brought books of pictures of his work from beautiful bedroom sets, customs chairs and an amazing circular staircase that cost almost as much as our first house. The rest of the students had varied backgrounds from surgeons, accountants, carpenter, research librarian, IT, and a grocer.

Each student's work varied greatly. Some decided to stick with 1-2 large pieces representing a potential lampstand or a sculpture. Some made parts that could eventually be turned into a chair. But the variations were as varied as our desires.

In the end, this was one of my best classes so far. By day 3 we were taking as many breaks to hang out as we were working. We really all got along so well. Here is hoping that Michael comes back someday or that my travels find me in North Central California.

And finally because I couldn't possibly have taken enough "good" photos of everyone else's work please go to the school "smugmug" link for photos taken by Marc's Cousin Dianne:

A few bonus pictures of my travels to and from the school. I love how you can drive the same road several times a year and then one day you just notice something a bit different. The school is roughly one hour NE of Bloomington, IN where I live so I usually just drive each way. And to vary the drive I try and take various routes. Much of this part of Indiana is in rural farmlands so there are numerous ways to go and you drive through some very small towns.

Now I've seen a lot of people who collect and often decorate their garage or barn with 1940-1970's gas station paraphernalia or real or reproduction tin advertising signs. But I've never seen it done to such a degree as below. On the main E-W road 500N through town, just east of the high school you can just catch a glimpse of this field of old gas station signs all lovingly painted the same white paintjob on the bases and all arranged like a military parade. What especially struck me is that they are all exactly or nearly exactly the same scale. So there must have some standardization. As I took the photos there was even a young woman who was painting all the bases a fresh coat of paint. When I asked what the story was she just smiled and very politely said, the owner just always collected them, and finally decided to display them.

Well, I'm glad he did!