Most studio furniture makers, most crafts people, for that matter, work alone. One of the biggest adjustments to life after school or after an apprenticeship is the transition from membership in a group, working together and socializing, to the solitude of our individual workshops. Certainly there are fewer distractions on our own, so the work can go more quickly, but the lack of interaction with people in our field is quickly missed.

Part of that group interaction is problem-solving. Alone, we become independent and begin to make our own decisions, which is of course essential to our development. But there we are, a lot of us reinventing the same wheel.

The idea that our education ends with our formal training seems more and more limiting and less and less true. Taking classes, putting ourselves back into a receptive frame of mind, can be reenergizing on many levels.

Woodturners have organized themselves most successfully in the past ten to fifteen years. They began with yearly conferences and have gradually added smaller regional conferences, local monthly or bi-monthly meetings, and several periodic journals. The most recent annual conference of the American Association of Woodturners (AAW) in Greensboro, NC, brought together over 900 participants!

Why attend a conference? The immediate rewards in include the opportunity to pick up technical hints from demonstrations, to encounter the perspectives of furniture makers that you might only read about in magazines, to see the collective works of a colleague and hear about the development of the artist's design sense in his or her own words, to view an exhibition of new work, to ask questions of a furniture maker directly, and to see a trade show of products geared toward our profession. Conferences are full of inspiration and practical understandings to take back to the studio.

But the biggest reason to attend is networking and building a sense of community. People are there because of their interest in the field and their desire to further themselves. The enthusiasm that results can create ties that last beyond the conference. Every other craft medium has a group: the Glass Arts Society (GAS), Society of North American Goldsmiths (SNAG), for example. It is rather remarkable that there isn't an organization for furniture makers. Here is an opportunity to help shape one. It will be worth your while. The Steering Committee has spent many hours developing and promoting this concept.