Alamo Woodturners to Host Kirk Acosta Bird-Themed Demo April 23

Kirk Acosta gave Alamo Woodturners something better than a clean preview list: a little suspense. The club’s April 23 meeting at Grace Northridge Church in San Antonio centered on a bird-themed demo, but the home page kept the project coy, saying only that Acosta would turn “a bird of some kind” when the evening began at 6:30 p.m. That kind of tease fits a club that knows a live demo is often more compelling when turners have to watch the form emerge at the lathe.

The setting was practical and familiar, at 2659 Eisenhauer Rd., San Antonio, TX 78209, and the meeting carried the same club rhythm Alamo Woodturners has built for decades. The association began in the early 1990s when about 8 to 10 members of the Shop Smith Club formed the group. Today it says its mission is to promote woodturning from novice to advanced turners, and it organizes around two interest groups, Bowl Turners and Pen Turners. The home page also reminded members about the “Bring Back Drawing,” asking anyone who had won the previous month to bring an item back for the current drawing, a small detail that says as much about club culture as the demo itself.

Acosta is no stranger to that audience. Archived club video listings show him demonstrating “Making Attractive Lidded Boxes” in March 2022 and a wooden stem wine glass in February 2020. The club’s YouTube archive also shows him turning a natural-edge bowl at an April 2019 bowl meeting. That range, from hollow forms and stemware to bowls, makes a bird project feel less like a novelty and more like another chance to see shape, balance, and surface work handled by a turner who moves comfortably between practical and decorative work.

His background gives the demo an extra layer of interest. Biographical listings identify Kirk Acosta, also listed as Carmie K. Acosta, as San Antonio-born and raised, and say he works as a synthetic organic chemist specializing in steroid synthesis. Those same listings say he began woodturning in 2000 after his father died. That mix of science and craft often shows up in the turnings themselves: careful proportion, patient shaping, and the kind of finish that makes a small object read clearly from across a room.

Alamo Woodturners’ broader affiliations place that local meeting inside a wider turning network, linking the club to the American Association of Woodturners, the International Association of Penturners, and the Southwest Association of Turners. At Grace Northridge Church, though, the appeal was simple and immediate: a familiar club night, a named demonstrator, and a bird form waiting to take shape one cut at a time.