Wood Artwork
Passing Time flowing through the winds of destiny, inhaled by leaves and consumed, captured and written onto the growing fabric of concentric rings:
Wood is History solidified
When MasterTreeIII fell in the Summer of 2016, my uprooted soul needed to heal. Without any solutions and a deep lingering emotion to honor my tree, I kept all of the fallen wood that was otherwise destined to be incinerated. The new destiny of MasterTreeIII led to the formation of a wood collaborative and the birth of my wood art portfolio.
When woodworking, there are moments when I hear the dim primal heartbeat of the land and feel a momentary umbilical connection to MotherEarth, as I sometimes do when running,....and it leaves me with a desire to synchronize to a rhythm long forgotten and overwhelmed by technology. And as much as I fight the herpes-like encroachment of technology into my soul, I realize that I am a child of both worlds: I am a human dream born in the petri dish of technology. On dreamy days, sometimes I wonder, whether Technology will lead us to transcendence or oblivion...or maybe a transcendent oblivion. Nevertheless, over the years, as my mind has become accustomed to the continuous bombardment of changing sugary stimulation, I wonder if perhaps we have lost something...perhaps through the thousands of years of human existence, there is some utility to repetitive, mundane and meditative work connecting our minds to the actions of our body, often done in the company of other people just trying to get by in life. Maybe woven into these moments, stretched over long time spans, are deeply seeped conversations and a sense of peace that cannot be found anywhere in the technological landscape.
I want to investigate the therapeutic properties of woodworking within a collaborative. I want to reconnect our larger existence of Humanity to Mother Earth, so that we can once again feel part of the cycles of Nature. I want to explore whether woodworking using materials connected to the Earth of our local community can build a unified sense of the American identity strengthened by our different backgrounds.
Destiny of Wood Artwork
Stage One - Grow my Craft
Develop, experiment, and explore new techniques that will define my style
Based on Nature
Experiments based on fungal growth on wood (spalted wood) and creatures that eat it.
Acceleration of other natural processes of deterioration and decomposition
Based on the Beast
Intersection between wood and emerging technology (eg microchips, 3D printing, plastics, recursive scanning and printing).
Furniture making
Explore how to make non-level structures that have a mixture of curvatures that allows stability but also vibrant shape.
Symbolism
Among other things: pregnancy of Mother Earth with technology and humanity, solidification and liquification of time, death, redemption, birth, pregnancy, sexuality, Nature, humanity's umbilical connection to the Earth and Nature.
Stage Two - Community and Identity
Create a community consisting of people across ages, genders, cultures, etc
Once the group reaches stable state with consistent members, discuss core values and identity expressed through woodworking. Based on that, design an art project that is composed of multiple pieces made by each member. When all of the pieces are combined together, they have a larger emergent meaning.
These discussions can include themes of: the destiny of humanity measured through time; our umbilical connection to the earth, nature and the environment; our duty to heal the world; our identity and role in nature (eg are we animals or are we something entirely different).
Explore and develop the art of therapy during our woodworking sessions.
Focus on creating artwork from local wood that is destined to destruction.
Create initiatives in which our group honors and fertilizes living trees and plants new ones.
Create a separate website for the wood collaborative, with one page dedicated to all artwork created from MasterTreeIII.
Stage Three - Make it Epic
Through a series of videos and workshops, popularize and teach:
how to feel connected to the Earth of your local community by giving new destiny to fallen wood destined to destruction in your neighborhood.
explore our collective American identity through different backgrounds by bringing in interesting wood from other nations to represent our diverse backgrounds.
how to conserve a diversity of indigenous tree species in your local community
how to make woodworking a therapeutic process, especially within a group
Make a nationwide wood art project and then worldwide
The Wood Collaborative
Forced to order the death of MasterTreeIII, my soul broke as I watched the breathtaking majesty of MasterTreeIII torn, piece by piece, by a human-mechanical beast. By the end, depressed, helpless and weak, I was surrounded by the freshly cut limbs of MasterTreeIII and submerged in deep memories rooted in my childhood. With my mother's blessing and the tree cutter's scorn, I kept all of the wood...with the promise that somehow I would honor the hundreds of years of growth contained within this tree.
I remember appreciating a passage from the Lord of the Rings, where Tolkien wrote that the road is like a river flowing into an unknown vastness...and if you set foot into this river and the winds of destiny are just right, they will carry you away into a faraway adventure. As a child, from my living room window, I would often watch the endless stream of cars carried upon the flowing tar of Maple Street, wondering what type of people passed by my house everyday and what sorts of adventures they went on. When MasterTreeIII cleaved into two, I was forced to kill my tree to ensure the safety of Maple Street. A few days after MasterTreeIII died, as the ants continued to drink the bleeding sap of the cut logs and the mountain of woodchips continued to exhale a fermented smoke, magically the river of destiny brought Stephen Kaye who helped me honor the wood of the fallen MasterTreeIII. After meeting him for the first time, I learned that Stephen uses freshly cut wood to handcraft spoons and bowls....and from that first meeting we began our Wood Collaborative. Now, a small group of us meet nearly every Sunday 1-5pm to talk, to think, to learn and to woodcraft. It is open to everyone, contact me if you would like to join.
Wood Art Portfolio
Click on any of the links below to see my portfolio for each category or alternatively, select the submenu item underneath the Woodcraft menu option.
