Photo by Claire Kivior
By Claire Kivior
Contributing writer
Willie Simmons grew up in his father’s woodshop in Fincastle. From a young age, Simmons studied his father working in the shop repairing and finishing furniture. Simmons grew impatient from just watching, so one day he asked his father if he could help. His father quickly agreed.
Just “take the old one, and cut everything away that don’t look like it,” instructed Simmons’s father.
“And that’s what I did, and it worked,” exclaimed Simmons. “I thought, this is kinda fun, so I started reading books, and by ’85 I was pretty much hooked.”
By 1990, Simmons was sure he had found his life’s passion. Simmons began teaching Woodshop and Agriculture in public schools and working alongside his father in his shop.
Simmons soon grew sick of just refurbishing, until he discovered woodturning. As Simmons explains it, woodturning is “using a lathe, which is a machine that revolves the wood, and you take a tool, and cut the wood away, as opposed to wood working, which is mostly flat. It’s addicting because if you’re a flat wood worker, and then you start using a lathe, all your flat wood just becomes shelves.”
Once Simmons realized he could stop doing refurbishing, and become a woodturner full-time, he sold everything, and opened his own shop.
Simmons started off self-taught. This was due to a bad first experience, when introducing himself to a group of other woodturners. Simmons eagerly wanted demonstrations from other well-known woodturners, but couldn’t get their attention. The first three woodturners he met “were real jerks. They wouldn’t talk to me. I thought that all woodturners were like that, so for five years I pretty much lived in a vacuum, until I met a guy from Roanoke. He took me to the Blue Ridge Woodturners… since then, everyone else has been so nice and giving.”
The Blue Ridge Woodturners is a group of woodturners in the Southwest Virginia region with a passion the same as Simmons. Simmons has served as the group’s program director for almost 10 years. In this position, he is responsible for creating a program for the club’s meetings and inviting international craftsmen to demonstrate for the club.
Simmons uses many different types of wood in his craft. Sometimes, he will work with a dyed wood called SpectraPly, which creates layers of different colored wood in his works. Other times, Simmons will collect “roadside found wood,” from fallen trees or unwanted firewood. Simmons will just pull over his truck, and stop and say, “Can I have some of this?”
Simmons takes inspiration from shapes in nature, and other artists. “I would do a lot of repeat and see something I like, then try to recreate it.”
A favorite piece of Simmons was a set of bowls he made for his wife, Brenda. “When her father died there was this big maple tree. It had overgrown. They didn’t want any of the wood, so with the trunk, I made I think about five bowls. I took them home, and she really liked them. I said, they’re yours. You can take whatever you like.”
His other favorite piece is a child’s rocking chair he made for his son. However, “now he’s 6’4”, and doesn’t fit.”
Simmons describes the purpose of his art as being functional, and subtle. “We are generally drawn to things that are subtle, that you don’t get tired of. You look at it, and think ‘Oh, this is really cool.’” Simmons believes subtle is always in style.
Simmons illustrated this concept in an analogy— a dressmaker is giving away two dresses, a plain, black dress, and a colorful and trendy, top-of-the-line dress. The dressmaker plans to give away a dress to a customer, but only one. Simmons explains the better dress to choose is the plain, black dress because “you’ll never get tired of it. It’s classy, and always in fashion. People will not get tired of it. That’s the kind of stuff that I like.” That’s the “stuff” he creates. “I make stuff that blends in pretty much anywhere.”
Simmons does not consider himself to be an artist. “In order to be an artist, you have to master the craft. I’m not really sure what art is. I see things, and I like them.” The more he learns, the more he realizes he does not know yet. “I was probably a better turner in my mind five years after I got started then I am now because now I know how much I don’t know, and how much I can’t do…I’ll never know it all, and there’s always room for improvement.” Simmons is always eager to learn more. This is why he considers himself “not an artist, but a craftsman.”
Simmons is overflowing with ideas. “I run out of energy before I run out of ideas,” he claims, with bowls and cups stacked up to the ceiling of his shop to prove it. Outside work tends to take precedent over his craft. Simmons tells me his wife Brenda suggested, “You ought to go down there one day a week and do just what you wanna do– and I don’t often enough,” but this is something he is working on.
The most important lesson Simmons has learned from his years of woodturning is to “just try. The worst you can do is screw up. My father taught me that. The worst thing you can lose is some time, and wood, but you’re gonna lose the time anyhow because you can’t save it.”
This upcoming month, Simmons and Brenda are taking a vacation— traveling to Maryland, and around to studios in Virginia where he will be leading demonstrations to other woodturners, on his path to mastering his craft.
