Most summer Saturday mornings, one can find Christopher Bean arriving early to Urbana’s Market at the Square to set up his stand for the busy day ahead. Though, unlike many of his produce-slinging neighbors, Bean is there to sell his wooden creations.
His stand offers a broad selection of imaginative wooden bowls and vessels to visitors. Bean creates each piece through woodturning — a process that uses a lathe, or a machine that rotates wood while the artist shapes it with tools.
Bean began learning the craft during the pandemic, when an excess of time on his hands led him to the woodturning corner of YouTube. After watching several videos, he ventured into his parents’ woodshop to try it for himself.
“At one point, I decided, ‘Hey, I think I could figure out how to do that,’” Bean said. “So I went down to the wood shop and tried, and the first bowl I tried to make was a segmented bowl that came out way better than I expected.”
Bean came to the University in 2021 as a graduate student studying materials science and engineering. Upon his arrival, he approached the Siebel Center for Design and was brought on as a volunteer. He was soon hired as a paid staff member and led workshops in woodturning for guests.
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Neil Pearse, assistant director for lab operations at SCD, hired Bean and has worked with him since.
“One of the defining characteristics that I’ve noticed about Chris is he’s a very patient person, which is really important when you’re doing a lot of woodwork,” Pearse said. “I’ve seen him be 10 to 15 hours into a project and have the whole thing explode. Like everything broke. And he takes that really well in stride.”
At SCD, Bean also met Riaan Yao, now a rising senior in Engineering who works in the woodshop. Yao had been woodworking since middle school, but didn’t practice woodturning before he met Bean.
“I used to not be a huge fan of turning because there was no reason for me to do it before,” Yao said. “But after having seen him do so much turning at the shop, I was pretty curious about it.”
Pearse mentioned similar exchanges of knowledge in the shop.
“One of the best things about working in a space like this is that nobody who comes in here knows everything and everybody can learn something from everybody else,” Pearse said. “So I’ve definitely learned a lot of specific techniques from Chris.”
Yao said he hoped to go to grad school someday, and has learned a lot from Bean about the importance of having a creative hobby during that experience.
“Having a hobby in which you are creating something seems to be pretty beneficial in terms of just general quality of life,” Yao said. “It seems like woodturning for Chris is something that really enriches his day-to-day life.”
Bean estimates he has made four or five hundred bowls in his life, yet his design process differs depending on the intricacies of the wood he uses. He sources his own material from the landscape recycling center in Urbana, where he uses a chainsaw to separate manageable pieces of wood.
“The design process starts all the way there when you’re cutting it from the big log because how you’re going to orient the piece, how the grain of the wood runs, those change based on how you cut from the log itself,” Bean said. “When I see a piece, I’ll have an idea of what it’s going to look like beforehand. Then once I get it back to the shop and onto the lathe, then it can come into fruition.”
Bean started selling his wares at the market in the summer of 2023, when bowls and other pieces started to stack up in his apartment. He continued selling there last summer, and will be setting up shop at the market six weekends this summer.
Efficient organization, a lack of other woodworkers and chance encounters are highlights of the market for Bean.
“It’s fun to see people I know from campus coming around to the farmers market,” Bean said. “This past weekend, I ran into a lot of other grad students and some friends that I know from campus that I do not necessarily expect to see there. You can also sometimes see professors who may or may not recognize you … It’s fun.”
Though Bean studies materials science and engineering at the University, his academic work is largely unrelated to his woodturning, which he sees as a hobby. He works in a group that studies how metals break, doing data analysis and research on the computational end.
“It’s sort of a nice balance for my brain to decompress or process my day by woodturning,” Bean said. “When I’m sick of being in front of a computer all day, going to a wood shop and being able to make a bowl and then have something physical, tangible in my hands, is satisfying.”
Those interested in viewing Bean’s work or buying a piece can find him on Instagram @the.human_bean, his website or contact him at [email protected].
