SKYLAR WILLIAMS/viewJamie Yocono teaches students the art of woodworking in her North Las Vegas one-woman shop.
Photos by SKYLAR WILLIAMS/viewLeft, Wood It Is owner and instructor Jamie Yocono stands next to a table saw in her shop at the school, 2267 W. Gowan Road. Right, Yocono says her top-of-the-line tools and years of experience offer students an above-average learning environment.
Photos by SKYLAR WILLIAMS/viewLeft, Wood It Is owner and instructor Jamie Yocono stands next to a table saw in her shop at the school, 2267 W. Gowan Road. Right, Yocono says her top-of-the-line tools and years of experience offer students an above-average learning environment.
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Teacher and master woodworker Jamie Yocono is a new North Las Vegas business owner who thinks of herself as "a one-woman shop." With the June opening of her woodworking school, Wood It Is, 2267 W. Gowan Road, serving as proof, the journeyman carpenter may not be too far off base.
Yocono said she has been designing and building custom furniture for more than 35 years, a love affair that was sparked by a high school woodworking class that eventually led to a degree in furniture design and a string of galleries in the Midwest.
After spending the majority of her adult life in Ohio, where she taught woodworking for more than 10 years at the University of Akron, Yocono made the move to Las Vegas, opened a small studio where she devoted most of her time to building custom furniture and applied to teach at the College of Southern Nevada.
"The college offers courses in woodworking, but I attended one when I first moved to the valley and the numbers of people in the class makes it hard to get individual attention from an instructor," she said.
Yocono said it was after that experience that she began toying with the idea of opening her own woodworking school.
The school hosted its first course June 1.
"It's been so much fun," she said. "I really missed teaching."
Yocono said she typically limits the number of people in each class to six to provide individual attention to each of her students.
"I want people to get something out of this," she said. "The only way to accomplish that is to give them one-on-one time for questions and to just make sure they're not having issues."
For now, Yocono is hosting a weekly course for beginners, a class she said is a prerequisite for anyone interested in taking a more advanced course at the school.
"I need to be able to assess the students' level of skill and know for certain they have been taught the proper way to use the tools," she said. "The only way to ensure this happens is to do it myself."
Students Mary and Bob Boyle have been self-taught woodworkers for many years, although Bob admits that he has probably been using the tools in his garage in some unsafe ways for the majority of those years.
"That's the one thing Jamie always focuses on is safety," he said. "The great thing about taking a beginners course is that you really have the chance to learn how to use the equipment in a safe way."
Bob said he was shocked on the first night of class when Yocono demonstrated methods for proper tool use and described steps a woodworker never wants to take while working with saws and other woodworking equipment.
"The majority of instruction we got, I was doing all of that bad stuff at home," he said. "And I thought I knew what I was doing."
Mary said she has always been interested in the art of woodworking, but was never confident enough in her ability to handle the necessary tools to make building a table or bookshelf anything more than a dream.
"I always had an interest, just not the knowledge," she said.
When the couple met Yocono at a group meeting for people interested in woodworking last month, she began talking about the school and what she planned to offer.
"We knew right away that we wanted to enroll for the first series of classes," Mary said. "And we haven't been sorry. We're only into our third or fourth week now and I've already learned so much. And I even have a few projects under my belt."
In the next six months, Yocono said she hopes to offer more advanced courses in cabinetry, table and bookcase building.
The next beginners course will start July 24. Registration is open so long as the class does not fill up. For more information, call 631-1870 or visit www.wooditis.com.
Yocono said that as the shop's list of available courses grows, she hopes to eventually add instructors in tile and mosaic work, musical instrument construction and sculpting.
"I know there is a desire for a place like this to exist in North Las Vegas," she said. "I feel like I'm not just helping people learn this skill. I am trying to show them that they can be artists. Woodworking is an art. And anybody can do it and take pride in that."
Contact North Las Vegas and Downtown View reporter Amanda Llewellyn at allewellyn@viewnews.com or 380-4535.
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