APSU German professor finds peace during COVID-19 through wood working

Dr. Beatrix Brockman

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – After a long day of teaching in front of a computer screen, Dr. Beatrix Brockman blinks her red eyes, steps away from her desk and heads into the garage, with its concrete floors and overwhelming smell of sawdust. In this cavernous space, it sometimes feels as if she has stepped back in time into her father’s workshop.

“You’re offline in there,” Brockman, an Austin Peay State University associate professor of German, said. “It’s too dusty so you can’t have computers or cell phones. And there’s no room in your brain for doom scrolling (on social media).”

In the garage, she turns on the air filtration and dust collection systems, takes a block of wood to the far wall and flips on the scroll saw. With goggles protecting her eyes, she guides the wood around the saw’s thin blade, shaping it into her latest work of art. For five years, this woodworking hobby has provided her moments of creative flow and contemplation to recharge from her day job – teaching and mentoring Austin Peay students.

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in the Spring of 2020, forcing her to teach the complexities of a foreign language and literature through the impersonal world of Zoom, the scroll saw in the garage suddenly became much more important.

“It keeps me sane,” Brockman said. “It’s Zen, following the line that you’re sawing. You absolutely have to have that, to step away. That and my garage are my refuge.”

A sculpture of Santa Claus

In April, she shared this refuge with the wider community in the APSU College of Arts and Letters’ video series, “We Can’t Make It Without the Arts.” Her episode, “,” focused on the calming effects of this artform.

But her art is more than therapeutic release, a way of winding down after a busy day. In the five years since she began her woodworking, Brockman has grown into a gifted artist, winning first-, second- and third-place awards over the years at the RiverFest Juried Art Show. She takes occasional commissions and makes special gifts – including a massive, 52-inch walnut/maple bald eagle that she presented to the APSU Military Student Center – and this winter, the national Scroll Saw Woodworking and Crafts magazine will publish a pattern Brockman designed.

“I wish I would have gotten her the jewelry”

Brockman was born in Salzgitter, Germany, where her father worked as a carpenter. She later married a retired U.S. Army soldier who also likes to work with wood, making her (standing) desks and bookshelves over the years. The couple eventually found themselves living in Clarksville, Tennessee, where Brockman, after earning her Ph.D. at Vanderbilt, became a professor at Austin Peay.

One day, feeling nostalgic for Germany and the wooden nativity arches she used to see at Christmas time, she asked her husband to make her one.

“He said, ‘No, do it yourself,’” she recalled.

So, after a bit of research, she took some wood to her husband’s scroll saw and set to work. A few days later, she had her own, hand-crafted Christmas arch.

A 52-inch walnut/maple bald eagle

“It turned out horrible,” she said. “It was a rickety cheap scroll saw. That didn’t come out well. But you start practicing, and soon I was like, ‘I want my own scroll saw and I want a better one.”

The Brockmans now have a two-car garage with no room for any cars. The space is an elaborate workshop, with “His and Her” tools, such as a large bandsaw, a scroll saw, sanding stations and a wood lathe. The shop is where she spends many afternoons and weekends, creating wood artworks of everything from portraits of Shakespeare, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her husband to owls and holiday decorations.

“We keep buying new tools and buying materials and saw blades,” she said. “My husband now says, ‘I wish would have gotten her the jewelry.’”

“Wood is my favorite material”

When Brockman begins a new project, she visits the Hardwood Grove, a small veteran-owned store on Madison Street, or she browses the exotic wood section of the hardwood company on Dover Road where many local cabinet makers buy their materials.

“Wood is my favorite material,” she said. “I look at wood grain and I see animal fur, I see the hair of a figurine. In March, someone ordered a yoga pose (sculpture), and in the picture, she modeled the pose wearing a skirt, so I looked for a wood grain that matched the skirt. I always see patterns.”

The type of wood – and the grain – is key to each work because Brockman doesn’t add any colors or stains to her pieces. Every work she creates uses the original wood color, rubbed with walnut oil.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg sculpture

“The eagle (for the APSU Military Student Center) took about 35 hours. You have to imagine it like a puzzle,” she said. “You cut out all the little parts like puzzle pieces. In order to make it look lively, the grain direction of the wood has to change for each piece, you have to be very precise. After they’re all cut out, you have to go to a sanding station and shape each one individually to get a 3-D effect.”

When the work is done, Brockman turns off her saw, shuts off the lights and heads back into the house. The computer is waiting.

“I teach on Zoom, so I’m making sure my students are focusing, collaborating and learning while talking German to each other,” she said. “Like I said, it (her art) helps me recharge.”

In addition to her wood-working and teaching at APSU, Brockman is the author of “Angelika Schrobsdorff: Leben ohne Heimat” – a German-language biography of an acclaimed writer and Holocaust survivor – and “Only In Flight Do You Catch Words: the Poetics of Eva Strittmatter” – the first critical examination of the East German poet’s works.

After a research semester in Fall of 2019 in Berlin, she is currently working on the biography of Eva Strittmatter.

To view more of her artwork, visit .

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