Virtual panel explores Fort Bragg’s fine woodworking tradition

UKIAH, Ca., 7/9/24 — As part of the Grace Hudson Museum’s current show, Deep Roots, Spreading Branches: Fine Woodworking of the Krenov School, the museum is hosting a panel on Saturday of three of the most influential artisans in James Krenov’s School of Fine Woodworking in Fort Bragg. Creighton Hoke helped establish the school, then known as the College of the Redwoods Fine Woodworking Program, in 1981. Shop manager and instructor David Welter and Laura Mays, the Krenov School’s director and lead instructor, join Hoke on the panel.

Hoke came from the East Coast to join a school that he ended up helping to organize, Welter came from Iowa for the nine-month program and never left; after reading Krenov’s books, Mays left her native Ireland in 2001 and became director ten years later.