On 8 Dec 2006 20:45:15 -0800, "Joe Fleming" wrote:

So the question becomes, where do I get my ideas, my spark, my
inspiration?

Well, if I were to answer this question honestly, I think I'd have to
say most of my inspiration comes from industry. While a lot of folks
would find that dull, there are a lot of very nice designs that
develop almost accidently during the course of creating a product.
The function determines the form, and while the end result may be
something like a simple box, there are often stages of the process
where the materials look like something different altogether,

On the other side, I occasionally take a notebook along when I go out
looking for wood, and sketch interesting shapes I see out in the
forest. But that doesn't happen as often as I might like, with all
the irons I've got in the fire, and it'd be a little disingenous to
say that that's my main inspiration.

Back to the original musing, I actually try to avoid looking at other
turnings much of the time, so that I can make my own things, and am
not intentionally or unintentionally copying another person's work.
That being said, there are only so many basic shapes, so everything is
bound to look a little like something else if you look hard enough.