Rising Stars: Meet Alex Bond

Today we’d like to introduce you to Alex Bond.

Hi Alex, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I started Turning Wild Woodturning Studio and School to invite people to connect with nature, other people, and themselves by turning trees on the lathe. Turning Wild is similar in structure to a pottery studio – except we utilize wood instead of clay. Turning Wild hosts a variety of classes using locally and sustainably harvested trees. We believe that, like humans, all trees are born with an inherent beauty that can be revealed through the experience of carving.

Growing up in Manitou Springs, Colorado, I received the gift of an early life rooted in creativity and the wonders of the natural world. I walked through tunnels of hanging Gambel Oak on my way to school and built BMX jumps through the pinion-juniper forest. There was enough beauty in my young world to allow me feel completely at home. In the beginning, I was a happy and artistic child experiencing beauty in every moment.

As childhood transitioned into adolescence and then adulthood, the artistic child I once knew began to fade. Mental illness, drug and alcohol addiction, selfishness, and other impregnations of life intent on corporatizing my existence started to pick away at the artist I cherished. Like so many tragic stories of today’s youth, that artist was extinguished completely – almost.

In 2015, on the brink of disaster, I unceremoniously flipped the scaffolding on my life. In a desperate effort, I flung myself into the arms of my last and original mentor, nature itself. I quit my job as a server and took a role as a wilderness guide for at-risk youth in the deepest and most remote corners of the west. It was in those bitter cold mornings of the high desert, soaked in the potency of relationship and high on the power of immense service that I began to see the child I had lost. I saw that child reflected in the young men and women I guided who worked tenaciously every day to rediscover what was hiding inside of them. I saw my own child, face soaked in firelight, laughing and howling to a nearly forgotten tune.

It was in that same desert, in between facilitating therapeutic groups and leading moonlit hikes, that I found myself with a knife in one hand a tree in the other. I learned to carve in the purest form: with only a sharp blade, my own hand, and whatever gifts the tree lay down to offer. Day after day spent underneath the Juniper canopy, I began to develop a sort of x-ray vision; the superpower of seeing the true form beneath the surface arrived like a gift from God. I could see, clear as desert air, the scared and tender child beneath the adolescent raging in anger. I could see, clear as desert air, the soft and sacred grains beneath the most gnarled and twisted of trees. And I could see, clear as desert air, that my own niche in life was to facilitate a process of carving in order to reveal whatever was hiding – in nature, in others, and in myself.

The moment I realized that my purpose in life was to carve, the grunt work began. I got up early and stayed up late. I saved every penny I could to purchase tools and take classes. I found my way to a dusty old lathe and practiced turning until the motor gave out (literally). I turned and turned and learned and learned until one day, I was ready to teach.

In April 2022, I made the courageous decision to leave the comforts of my highly-paid position in the mental health field and open up a woodturning studio in Mancos. I spent the dark winter months converting an old and forgotten downtown movie theatre into a woodturning studio. With 3 full-size lathes, a bandsaw, drill press, and an amazing air purification system, the tiny studio is a haven for transformation. As people learn to turn timber on the lathe, local trees are transformed into beautiful bowls, vessels, and sculptural forms. In the process of turning, people are transformed from plastic mannequins (no offense!) back into the wild and genuine artists we were born as.

To find out more information about Turning Wild’s story and what exactly we offer, please visit www.turningwild.com. In the meantime, thank you for reading this and may your own story be filled with artistic and childlike joy!

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Of all the obstacles involved with starting a business – especially a creative business, one is by far the biggest beast of them all. I struggle with anxiety and depression.

Of course, I am not immune to the entrepeneureal challenges of even the most mentally stable of us all. With a wife, home, dogs, and new beautiful baby boy, time management is a more than notable challenge. Also, the task of managing money in an era of turbulent financial times has been no walk in the park. The list of “normal” business challenges goes on and on: decision-making fatigue, infrastructure limitations, marketing, the usual 101-type stuff.

Between the lines of the logistical challenges, however, lives anxiety and depression. As a professional artist and teacher, the experience I sell is intimately tied to the deepest threads of my worthiness. I believe in what I do and my work is tremendously meaningful. As a result, what were once standard workplace frustrations that I could insulate from my self-worth are now heartfelt emblems of my identity. In swirling the potions of business and creativity, I created a concoction for anxiety and depression to feed upon. At times, this has manifested in the form of complete overwhelm, brutal exhaustion, and strangely pleasant fantasies of a 9 to 5 job (something I thought I would never say!). “I’m not good enough,” “I am a failure,” and “nobody wants what I have to offer” are the common voices of my anxiety and depression.

When I am in a good relationship with my anxiety and depression, I can see through it. I can understand that there are a countless welcomed reasons for constructive feedback for a new business and that none of that feedback suggests I am a bad person or doing it wrong. As a result, I make the choice every single day to shackle the actions of my business to a place close to my heart. After all, what were once standard workplace satisfactions are now immeasurable tokens of authentic personal evolution and joy.

What I’m trying to say is it’s worth it – even if I have to drag anxiety and depression along for the ride.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
There are two main facets to my work, art and education.

I am a professional woodturner and sculptor using mediums of wood, metal, and stone, although I am most well known for art created in unison with nature on the lathe. I stand out from the crowd because every wooden vessel I create is personally harvested from deep and wild places, meaning every vessel tells a rich and potent story of the land. I utilize the lathe and chisel as the stage and microphone for trees to share their stories with people. And my work focuses on the knots and burls of salvaged and local trees. A burl is a tree’s illustration of its own resilience to hardship in its life. As a result, the more dynamic and connected the life of the tree, the more magnificent the burl-and the more magnificent the final form. Each collection of vessels I turn are a testament to the perfect brutality of nature and to a life connected to something greater.

In addition to creating beautiful art, I am dedicated to sharing everything I know through teaching. I believe that the process-the verb, experience, happening, of creating art is equal or greater in power to the finished form- the noun, the thing. After all, it is almost always my experience of making something that lives closer in my heart than the thing I actually made. The process of turning a tree directly from nature into a wonderful piece of art is enormously transformative, not only for the tree but for the person who turns it. I invite anybody reading this to put my word to the test and sign up for a class!

What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
As an artist, teacher, and a business owner, I have SO much to learn. I don’t know if I’ve ‘learned’ it, but something I am certainly ‘learning’ is to slow down.

The early days of my passion for woodturning and art came with a special type of tenacity. Teacher after teacher said: “wow, you move fast!” I turned a lot of vessels, learned a lot of lessons, and had the privilege of gifting my community with a large amount of beautiful art in a short period of time. I’m proud of my tenacity, I’m focused, hard-working, and I straight up get shit done!

With that said, tenacity to make and teach art can lead to burnout. And working on overdrive is an easy way to bypass other components of life’s vitality, like friendships, partnerships, children, fun, and so many others. I’ve definitely seen the look on my infant son’s face after I throw a long bender in the shop, the type of look that says, “I’ve really missed you.” My work has absolutely been in competition with my relationship with my wife, my friends, and my own self-care.

So what have I learned – I mean ‘am learning’ – from my mistakes? I am a better artist when I live a full life and a life of service. When I give my time freely, the time I take for art is more potent. I am learning that, like the trees themselves, I need to slow down. I can either turn art out at full octane before burning out in less than a decade, or I can slow down and weave art-making into the fabric of my life – and that way, I can be a maker until the day I die.

Contact Info:

• Website: turningwild.com, alexbondartwork.com
• Instagram: @turningwildstudios