Berea College Student Craft teaches students to create furniture and other artworks from wood, broomcorn, threads and clay, then markets them to the public. Recently, Student Craft has gone above and beyond, creating stringed musical instruments under the guidance of Rob Spiece, the director of Woodcraft.
Spiece has always been a musician and craftsman. When he arrived at Berea in 2021, he noticed one of the assistants was working on a dulcimer. With his interest piqued, Spiece collaborated with Florida artist Beth Ireland, an architectural woodturner who has made large pillars for buildings and runs her own craft shop. At her shop, she makes guitars that look like sculptures.
“I went down to her shop in December 2024 to spend three days making a simple little strum stick-style guitar,” Spiece said. “I came back here and was just filled with inspiration, so I started making a few instruments of my own.”
Photo by Kaelyn Brooker ’28
After this adventure, Spiece launched a weekend workshop series focused on making instruments throughout January and February. There, he taught students what he learned from visiting Ireland’s shop.
The Dulci-matic, an acoustic dulcimer-inspired guitar, was born after students Colin ’27 and Ameer ’27 were inspired to make a guitar with a melon shape. After the first prototype, the Melon turned into the Dulci-matic through many iterations. Beth also came to visit for a week in April, where she helped design the Jolt, an electric banjo guitar.
Currently, both the Jolt and Dulci-matic are available for purchase on the Student Craft website at bcstudentcraft.com.
“Each student got to make their own instrument,” Spiece said. “That was really cool because people were excited about it, and it opened my eyes to people’s talents and skill sets. What amazes me is that we could have any idea come in, and we have the ability to make that come to life in three dimensions.”
One of Spiece’s students, Janee ’27, has used this experience to develop and pursue their artistic dreams. Janee is a studio art major with a minor in computer science. Art has been a passion of theirs since they were little, and they aim to work as an animator. Janee’s journey into the arts began when they were 10, when they received their first sketchbook.
“It was gifted to me as a birthday present,” Janee recalled, “and I would mark that period in my life as the place where everything started.”
Photo by Evy Medley ’25
As years passed, Janee started taking art “really seriously,” narrowing down what they wanted to do with their talent.
“For the past few years, I’ve been famously not knowing what I want to focus on,” Janee admitted. “I just wanted to do art. But in the past year, I have known what I want to do. I want to be a visual development artist, and I have an actual goal instead of just mindlessly practicing.”
Before joining Student Craft, Janee interned for Zoom Group in the summer of 2024. There, they helped people with disabilities create art. Staff could also host their own
art workshops.
“I had my own workshop,” Janee explained, “like a comic book workshop, where people made comics. I brought my own comic books for people to look at so they could make their own stories.”
The transition from pencil and paper to drill and wood fiber seemed easy at first for Janee but proved difficult in practice. Woodwork requires close attention to detail, and as a person who struggles with this, Janee has had to ask supervisors to repeat themselves multiple times to understand. Janee’s supervisors have been very patient and understanding, allowing them to thrive in this environment.
Janee contributed designs for the guitars during summer 2025, including creating schematics for Jolt and Dulci-matic fretboards and the beautiful engravings on the headstocks of these instruments.
“I did multiple designs using a laser cutter to produce the shapes,”
Janee explained.
This experience inspired Janee to incorporate wood grain and music into some of their comic works, which include a story of an evil rock band and another story involving a group of witches with magical powers inspired by some of the materials used in Student Craft.
They also have plans to continue doing woodworking as a hobby in
the future.
“I appreciate the beauty of wood grain and want to incorporate those curvy, little, wavy lines into my line art or work,” Janee said.
Janee has a wide array of paths to choose from. They hope to work for animation studios such as Disney or Pixar. If that doesn’t work out, they may also consider entering the gaming industry as a concept artist or another tech-related field, leveraging their computer science experience.
