Wes Jones lives near Atlanta Georgia and has been a woodturner for over 30 years.  Wes retired in 2001 after a 31-year career as a fiber optic design engineer with Lucent Technologies and Bell Laboratories.  He now works full-time as a woodturning artist specializing in large decorative pieces, such as bowls, hollow forms, and vases.  He is most well known for his large hollow form creations made from native trees.  His pieces can be found in private collections throughout the country and have been displayed at the Reinhardt College Museum of Art and at various art shows and woodturning symposiums. 

     Wes is very active in promoting the development of woodturning art and furthering woodturning education.  Wes is a frequent woodturning demonstrator at various woodturning clubs and commercial venues.  He teaches woodturning courses at the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina and at the Dogwood Institute in Georgia as well as giving private woodturning instruction at his studio.

     Wes is a member of the American Association of Woodturners and is very active in three of the AAW chapter woodturning clubs in Georgia.  He is the past President of the Georgia Association of Woodturners in Atlanta and is a past Vice-President of the Peach State Woodturners in Oxford, Georgia.  He is also the past Treasurer and Newsletter Editor for the Chattahoochee Woodturners in Gainesville, GA. 

     Wes has studied with many well known woodturning artists, including Willard Baxter, Bobby Clemons, Doug Barnes, and John Roberts at the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina.  He has also studied with Todd Hoyer at the Appalachian Center for Craft and with David Ellsworth at the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Tennessee. 

     Wes works almost exclusively with woods indigenous to the Southeast.  He uses trees that have fallen victim to disease, old age, or encroaching development and are destined for the landfill or to be burned, turning them instead into objects of beauty.  Rather than working only with clear sections of the tree, he takes advantage of wild wood grain, discolorations, insect damage, bark inclusions, and other natural defects to emphasize the unique characteristics of each piece and reveal the natural beauty of the wood that lies within.