I am Joe Blow

After thirty years of earning a living as a machinist, I moved to Dubuque, Iowa in 2001 to live with my “significant other”. Due to my job being moved off shore (China), I was eligible to go back to school on a federal educational grant. I wanted a college degree for quite some time, and with so many avenues available to ma teaching seemed to be the natural choice for me. I graduated in 2003 with an Associate’s Degree at Northeast Iowa Community College and in 2005 from the University of Northern Iowa with a Bachelor’s Degree Technology Education. I started teaching at East Dubuque, Illinois High School in 2006, and there was a single wood lathe in the high school wood shop. I knew everything about turning metal from being a precision machinist, but nothing about turning wood, so in order to teach wood turning, I knew I needed to learn wood turning. I took a one day workshop on how to turn a wooden bowl and was hooked. My latent interest in art was piqued and I have evolved through the years with a lot of help from some great mentors/world class woodturning professionals.

- Lyndal Anthony