Ringmaster Gallery:

Jim Staley
About the Artist

Although educated as an engineer, Jim Staley has always enjoyed arts and crafts. After dabbling in wood carving oil painting and mosaics, Jim turned to stained glass. He made panels and windows using both copper foil and lead came techniques. Later, he began inlaying stained glass into wooden objects. This led him to making things completely out of wood. He made furniture for his home and for his children and grandchildren. Lately, Jim has concentrated on wooden segmented vessels. He either makes the entire vessel from Ring Master® rings or makes “feature” rings for some of them on a lathe.

When he began making the vessels, Jim found that the available computer for designing with Ring Master® was difficult to learn and didn’t emphasize the critical angle. At one time, he had his own software company and won first prize in a national contest to write the best educational software. So, it was natural for him to use this background to write Protoshaper, a computer program to design vessels made using Ring Master® rings. The current version contains worksheets for 24 “Protoshapes” and enables anyone familiar with Microsoft Excel to quickly design any vessel.

Jim entered two segmented vessels in the Durham Heritage Arts Festival in May, 2007 and won both first and second prizes. He has shown a vessel in the Durham Arts Council Exhibit during June and July, 2007. He is exhibiting his work at Green-Rice Galleries in Charlotte, NC and The Design Gallery near Asheville, NC.

In addition to developing Protoshaper, Jim helps others with one-on-one mentoring, by publishing articles in More Woodturning magazine, and by describing how he makes his segmented vessels using Ring Master® to woodturning clubs.

Jim is also an adjunct Professor at N.C. State University. He is leading a team of students who are using Ring Master® to do a scientific evaluation of various steels used in woodturning. Jim will present the results in Richmond at the annual meeting of the American Woodturners Association in June, 2008.

He is a member of the Durham Art Guild, the American Woodturners Assoc., and the North Carolina Woodturners Guild.