Hand-Turned for the Holidays
Artist Mike Flanigan crafts his hand-turned bowls from fallen High Country trees.
Photos submitted
Mike Flanigan of Foscoe drives around looking for trees.
Not just any tree will do.
He prefers a nut or fruit tree, and the more
deformed they are, the better they are to him. And they have to be dead, fallen on the ground.
Flanigan is a wood-turner, whose goal is to give these trees a new life. His artistic bowls
are at Alta Vista Gallery in Valle Crucis, and he’s delivered them in time for Christmas.
“When I’m driving around and see a tree down, I get excited if it’s a wood that I can put on
my lathe and turn,” Flanigan said. “Once, my wife, Lisa, went up to a homeowner’s door and asked if
we could have their fallen tree. Now that a lot of people know that I need to find local woods,
people will call me when they have a tree down that might be of use to me for
wood-turning.”
Flanigan is proud of the fact that his hand-turned bowls are from trees of the
High Country.
“We have such a large variety of trees here, so I have a lot of great
woods to work with,” he said. “I’ve always been into woods, even as a young person, so that’s why I
went into home-building.”
His business, Cornerstone Construction, has been building
fine homes for decades, but Flanigan’s heart has been craving to take his artistic skills to another
level.
“Mike’s hand-turned bowls are really artful,” said Alta Vista Gallery owner Maria
Santomasso-Hyde. “Each bowl tells a story about the tree and the life it had before Mike found it.
He takes it on a sort of spiritual journey, giving a fallen, diseased tree a new life as a thing of
beauty that will last forever. Mike’s bowls make truly special gifts because of
this.”
Flanigan added, “When I cut into a piece of wood, I never know what I will find.
Until you cut into it, you don’t know how beautiful and strong it can be. If the tree had flaws or
disease that often makes the most beautiful bowls that are highly sought-after. It gives me a lot of
satisfaction to give new life to these trees.”
Flanigan’s bowls at Alta Vista Gallery are
priced for gift-giving, ranging from $39 to $195. He also has hand-turned bottle-stoppers for $25.
Other unique, handmade gifts at Alta Vista include Mangum pottery, handmade jewelry from $18,
fused-glass photo frames by Megg Isaac, prints from $10, paintings from $85, craftsman-style art
tiles and stained glass.
Alta Vista also is the exclusive gallery for the art of Will
Moses, heir to Grandma Moses, whose print, “Christmas Eve Service,” is available for $128. The
gallery also sells Moses mini-prints for $25 framed, as well as Moses puzzles, Christmas cards and
art-books, such as “T’was the Night Before Christmas” and “Silent Night.”
Alta Vista Gallery,
which features more than 100 artists in oils, watercolors and prints, is located in a National
Register of Historic Places farmhouse at 2839 Broadstone Road in Valle Crucis, between Mast Farm Inn
and Mast Store Annex. View some of the art and a map/directions at http://www.altavistagallery.com,
call (828) 963-5247, or visit the gallery on Facebook.
Gallery Times
Gallery Times is a weekly news feature of The Mountain Times, featuring short news items submitted by local galleries.
For more information or to make a submission, contact editor Frank Ruggiero at (frank@mountaintimes.com) or (828) 264-6397.
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