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‘My life and breath’

Kelly Belew creates unique wooden tables

Couresy Photo Alpena artist Kelly Belew is seated inside Thunder Bay Arts Council Gallery with her unique wooden tables.

ALPENA — This self-taught woodworking artist has been making one-of-a-kind tables since she retired from teaching in 2019.

Kelly Belew, of Alpena, taught graphic arts and printing at Alpena High School and Alpena Community College.

“I was a computer, graphic arts and printing teacher,” she said. “So I’ve always been able to create things. The difference between my career as a teacher and now is I always reproduced things by hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands, identical images, in printing. So now, I get to create one-of-a-kind things, which has become my life and breath.”

Her artwork is on display and for sale at Thunder Bay Arts Council Gallery in downtown Alpena.

“It’s not always about selling to me,” Belew said. “It’s about having someone love something that you’ve created enough to buy it … I’ll never forget the first time I sold something. I was left in awe for weeks.”

Kelly Belew handcrafted this Michigan table.

She said it can be scary at first to put your artwork out to the public.

“You allow yourself to be vulnerable by putting things on display for people, and sometimes people really like it, and sometimes they really don’t, and each way is OK,” Belew said.

She said at first when she retired she realized she had a lot of time to fill.

“Initially you always think that all the free time in the world is going to be awesome, and it doesn’t take long to figure out that you really need something to do and focus on. So, I’ve always had either ink in my veins or sawdust in my nose, so took both of those things and started working on one-of-a-kind tables with epoxy.”

She enjoys the process, and gets lost in it when she’s creating her pieces.

Kelly Belew works on a piece in her workshop at her Alpena home.

“It has been a constant learning process,” Belew said. “I’m self-taught. And, if I see something on Pinterest and I think I like the idea, I transform it into something a little bit different on my own.”

For example, she came across fractal wood burning and decided to try it out.

“I found a microwave and built my own fractal wood burning out of a microwave transformer,” Belew said. “And that makes a lightning look. Then I added epoxy and color in the lightning, so it sort of enhanced things in a different way — a little bit more edgy.”

Fractal wood burning is done using electricity and a chemical to create unique designs burned into the wood.

“It’s very, very amazing to watch,” Belew said. “And you will never get the same pattern twice because each kind of wood is different, each application of the chemical is different.”

Here is a fractal wood burned piece Kelly Belew created using a microwave transformer and a chemical to burn the unique “lightning” into the wood.

She spends a lot of time in her wood shop, but she also enjoys traveling.

“My favorite thing to do is travel around the country and look for special pieces of wood,” Belew said. “I’ve gotten eucalyptus wood from Alabama, and I’ve gotten pecan wood from the south. Traveling around buying different kinds of wood is really double the creativity. Monkeypod is something that we haven’t really heard of up here, and I made a monkeypod table that was just really, really cool, and that was from Florida.”

She said making a table is therapeutic for her.

“To watch something go from a tree, and taking all the necessary steps to making it be something that is creative and usable as a table, is a fabulous journey,” she said. “It’s just a dynamic journey. And I like to incorporate other natural things. I did a Michigan table where I cut out the shape of Michigan on a birch bark and I inlaid it into black walnut.”

She said the process of making a table takes quite a while. She has several tables in progress at any given time, since it takes the epoxy 24 hours to set and an entire 30 days to fully cure.

Kelly Belew handcrafted this wooden table.

“I have found a place to do the planing to make the slabs perfectly parallel, top and bottom,” she explained. “So, once that’s done, I decide what I want to do with it. Sometimes the wood just leans one way or another and tells you what it wants to be like. I know that sounds funny, but that’s really what happens. And then I select the things I’m going to inlay in it, or how I’m going to cut it and sand it, and you seal the back of it, and the edges. Then you start pouring the top, and literally, you pour the top until it runs over the edges. It takes 30 days for epoxy to fully, fully cure.”

Belew loves being a part of the Thunder Bay Arts Council Gallery, which features 22 artists.

“Everyone has their own style, and nothing looks the same,” Belew said of the artwork at the gallery. “I feel so blessed to be a part of the council and the art gallery because we have so much talent in this area. It is amazing to be a part of such a fabulous group of people. We like each other, we appreciate each other, and we work so well together. It’s a beautiful little spot in Northeast Michigan.”

The gallery is located at 127 W. Chisholm St. in downtown Alpena. Hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. For more information, call 989-354-2586.

Belew has some advice for others who might have hobbies or creative ideas they haven’t yet pursued. She said everyone is creative in some way.

Kelly Belew works on a piece in her workshop at her Alpena home.

“I used to always tell my students ‘If you are ever doing something, and you lose track of time, whatever that was you were doing is something you absolutely must find a way to incorporate into your life,'” Belew said. “We get pretty preoccupied in the world with being productive.”

She said we should get back to being creative.

“Learning what you don’t like is almost as important, if not more so, than knowing what you do like,” Belew said. “When you’re doing something you love, you are passionate about it, and it shows in every aspect of what you do … What would the world be like if everyone was doing what made them happy?”

She encourages others to try creative outlets until they find out what clicks.

“If anyone else can learn how to do something, you can, too,” she said. “The only difference between someone else that has a bunch of stuff made in inventory is they’re doing it, and you’re not, and you could. You never know until you try.”

Here is an inlaid wooden piece by Kelly Belew.

Kelly Belew handcrafted this wooden table.

Kelly Belew handcrafted this wooden table.

Kelly Belew handcrafted this wooden table.

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