The Wood Turner

Avelino Samuel’s pieces are so polished, so perfect, and so precise, it’s hard to even imagine the process by which their beauty was revealed from scrap pieces of wood. The local wood turner’s talent has not gone unnoticed; he’s been sought out to teach symposiums in the mainland United States, and some of his pieces have found homes in the collections of popular connoisseurs. He also imparts his knowledge to lucky St. John students who find their way into his industrial arts classroom at a local primary school, a position from which he will soon retire after 30 years of teaching. 

You could say Avelino’s talent was born out of necessity. As a child growing up in St. John in the 1950s, toys were hard to come by, so he carved his own from scrap pieces of wood. He learned to use a knife from a very young age, and has the scars to prove it. When Avelino’s father recognized his young son’s talent, he put him to work making handles for tools like axes, and boat oars. 

Avelino’s creations evolved as he grew into his teen years, when he began making bows and arrows, and martial arts weapons like nun chucks. He even kept up with trends, carving wooden afro picks sporting zodiac signs for his friends in the 1970s. 

The wood turner then changed his focus from functional to artistic with impressionistic African masks, carved during his high school years in the very classroom where he teaches students today. Avelino’s first experience with actually turning wood happened in 1977, when he was taking a class in the USA. He created a small candy bowl whose scalloped edge he fondly recalls with an illustration of sweeping hand gestures.

It wasn’t until eight years later, in 1985, when Avelino finally had the chance to delve deeper into the passion which had been pulling at him for as long as he could remember. He bought himself a multipurpose woodworking machine and, based on the basic set of instructions included with the device, began turning out small items like bowls and table legs. Several years later, a friend came upon a lathe, complete with a training video that only fueled Avelino’s fire. 

“After I watched the video for the first time, my skin just felt like it was gonna jump way up,” Avelino recalls with excitement.

His talent was recognized by yet another friend, who encouraged him to attend a woodturning symposium in the states. He earned a scholarship, and Avelino went, hungry to learn how to create some of the beautiful wood art he saw in magazines. Avelino took in several wood turning demonstrations at the symposium, and about a month after he returned to his St. John home, he was turning out magazine-quality vessels on his friend’s borrowed lathe. 

He finally purchased his own wood working tools in the mid-1990s, and ever since then he’s been turning out stunning wood pieces from the studio at his Coral Bay home. It’s at this point in the conversation where he acknowledges what you’ve probably already realized: he has a gift.

“One of the things I discovered with this kind of work is that I was made to do it,” he says. “I have a good eye for making something round, smooth and flowing.”

These days, he focuses mainly on hollow vessels, the finished product standing at an average height of 15 inches with thicknesses of less than a quarter of an inch. But just because he’s perfected his chosen medium doesn’t mean his work has become stagnant. Avelino is always looking for new challenges, the most recent being a burning technique which he’s applied to his vessels. By painstakingly hand-burning tiny patterns onto the wooden vessel’s exterior, he adds texture, a departure from his traditionally smooth pieces.

Avelino’s talent continues to impress Tom and Livy Hitchcock, owners of the St. John gallery Bajo el Sol where the majority of his works are displayed.

“He truly is a St. John treasure,” says Tom Hitchcock. “People who see his work in the gallery just can’t believe it; they think he’s a master. They think his pieces are glass or ceramics and they want to know how the vessels are glued together. Our customers always wonder how he could hollow out the inside so smoothly. He has a real gift for having the vision of what a piece is going to look like. ”

So make sure a stop at the local art gallery is high on your list of vacation priorities. You’ve got to see Avelino’s work in person, and maybe even take one of his vessels home.

Avelino Samuel’s work can be found at Bajo el Sol gallery in St. John, and Gallery St. Thomas in St. Thomas. Email him at binosam@pennswoods.net for more information.