Symbolic

The Beast of Life

Embraced together, these two pieces of wood were born from the same log that I split in half, from the body of my Sacred Master Tree III. 

As Master Tree Three fell, I saved this log because I was deeply curious about the flow of the grain within the wood as it branched from one limb into two. After my ax cleaved  and split the log into two pieces, I discovered one half to be vaginal and the other half to be phallic with the head of a wild boar emerging from the side.  Layer by layer, I shaped, sanded and soaked the edges of each piece but I left the centers completely untamed and feral.  The untouched centers with turbulent patterns of grain contrasted with the uniform flow of grain on the edges that were processed and refined, representing each person's journey in learning how to balance the 'Id' and the 'Superego'.  [Pictured in the left panel is the front of each piece, and in the right panel, is the back.  It is wood from a Linden tree that grew in my yard and the black marks are pigment that was naturally left by fungus that impregnated the wood.  Originally I was thinking of finishing the edges in polyurethane to contrast it dramatically from the untouched center (polyurethane has the additional metaphorical feeling of jizz), but as my hands felt the undulating curves , I knew I wanted each person to similarly explore the pieces with the sense of touch and therefore I finished it with Tung oil which gives a person direct contact with the wood]. 

The Water and Prayer Spoon

Made from the wood of MasterTreeIII, a naturally occurring red line umbilical cord runs down the back of the spoon (right picture).  The spoon is in the shape of a cupped hand.  While I am not specifically Hindu, because I was raised in its culture, many ideas, rituals and symbols from Hinduism appear in my artwork.  I used to watch Hindu rituals where the cupped hand would hold water and before a puja (a prayer) often this water would be used to purify oneself.  After a prayer and in temples, people are offered water in the form of blessing.  And water cupped in the hand and thrown at a person can be used as a curse as well. 

The Hand of Destiny

After MasterTreeIII had fallen and before I had found the Wood Collaborative, I was lost and overwhelmed...how would I ever honor all the wood scattered throughout my backyard?  This was one of my first pieces of artwork created from the wood of MasterTreeIII.  That is why this is called the Hand of Destiny, because written into its palms is the promise that I will create beauty from the death of my cherished tree.  

I chose a piece of wood that had a natural branch emerging from the side that looked like a thumb.  The fingers curl inward because the piece of wood was not long enough to accommodate anything else. As a result, the fingers are somewhat distorted, but I think it adds to its artistic value.  I was truly fortunate to find naturally occurring red lines on the palm of the hand, representing the trajectory of destiny. 

The Double Headed Spoon

I was gifted a small piece of Tiger Maple which I carved into a double headed spoon, where the heads point in opposite directions, giving it a feeling of movement and rotation when submerged in the currents of life.  

The Spalted Spoon

As the wood for MasterTreeIII is consumed by Mother Earth, one of the first groups of decomposers are the fungi.  Some species of fungi are able to stain the wood in a process known as spalting.  Woodworkers that work on decorative projects (such as bowls) often seek spalted wood.  In the next phase of my woodworking, I am going to romance spalted wood, exploring every curved stain and shimmering pigment.  I made this spoon as a first exploration of spalted wood. 

The Spalted Rainbow

To see how deep the fungus penetrated, I cut into a log that was consumed by rot and adorned by little creatures.  These pieces were initially just a waste product from my main project, but as I gazed into the spalted wood, I became mesmerized.  Some love and affection through an intense session of sandpapering following by a bath in wood butter (mineral oil + beeswax) left me stunned.  Now these are decorations in my house. 

As I was flattening and squaring a log from my sacred tree, this beautifully elipitical piece of wood fell to the ground as a piece of trash.  Mesmerized by it, I sanded it and used a wood burner to etch a lietmotif in my artwork.  Those creatures represent wood lice, who initially have very little control over their destinies but once they land on the earth, they can transform the landscape.  The big creature is my mother and the three behind her are her 3 children.  The brownish red lines are created by the tree as a protective mechanism and the blush of black is pigment from fungus that invaded the wood as it sat drinking water in my backyard.

Throughout the week I had been leaking motivation and on Wednesday I found myself completely drained. To cure myself, I decided to work on a project that would quickly give me a feeling of accomplishment. This piece is from my Tree of Death (an Oak Tree that was torn down by a storm where I would offer small dead animals that I would occasionally find in my yard). I added some waves to it and sanded it and then applied shellac. As soon as I saw it, it reminded me of the hiccocampus, in particular the CA1-CA3-DG circuit (upper right, taken from https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/academic/class/15883-f13/slides/hc-anatomy.pdf) 

Look what I made! It is made from black birch that was locally harvested and, when it is fresh, the wood has a natural peppermint smell. The overall shape (when looked at horizontally) looks like the sign for infinity and the contrast between the front and back give it a sense of continuity from life into death into life. For this reason, when viewed vertically, it reminds me of a newborn baby (and if you look carefully, it also resembles milk filled breasts). I thought for a while on how to finish the piece and decided not to add anything. Instead, when showing the piece, I lightly bathe it with sandpaper which leaves a thin film of wood powder...giving it a very soft texture and a newborn appearance. On the back, at the end, there is still a bit of branch protruding outward which adds a little instability when it is on a table, allowing a person to gently rock it back and forth. 

Originally this was part of a trinity (see image above) but as each bowl began to form, I realized that its identity was fundamentally different, and so, the trinity turned into a duality and a singularity.  Thematically, it is similar to the piece above, where the bowl is like a crater, with a sharp rim that precipitously drops on one side and has a smooth angled descent on the other side.  However, in this piece I wanted to explore the storytelling of curves and create a fascinating topology the defied standard shapes and begged to be investigated with touch and sight.  This is made from black birch found in Ann G.'s yard.  I finished this piece with wood butter (mineral oil and beeswax) to give it a smooth alien-ship feel. 

More than 20 years ago, I hated the breath of Nature because it would infuse my lungs with allergies. I found insects to be disgusting and trees to be boring. Then one day, I found an ax, which I picked up and purposelessly drove into the flesh of a tree; and as I watched sap drip down like tears from the two cuts, I began to wonder why I did that. Somehow, injuring the tree gave it an identity in my universe and it slowly became my first ceremonial and sacred tree. In many ways, it became the umbilical cord that connects me to the Earth. A few months ago, during a storm, a branch fell from MasterTree1 and I honored my sacred tree by making this spoon. It is the wood of a Norway Maple and the dark color running down the center is some form of disease or rot. The spoon is designed with both female and male forms 

The Third Eye

Thrown away near my home, on the side of the road, a freshly cut log cried for days until I finally decided to have a look.  In the pile, I found one log that was diseased and brimming with insects crawling in and out of intricate chambers within.  I was enthralled, the orifice in the front was enough to make me fall in love.   As  I slowly hacked away at the ends, I began realizing that I was making a Third Eye.  To me, a Third Eye represents the ability to see profound depth where our normal eyes can only see mundane boredom.  To me, the Third Eye does this by tapping into the vast ocean of all human knowledge (Science), which allows us to see patterns and history and connections that our normal eyes cannot see.  Once I had completed it, I realized that it also represented my Identity because it was from a tree near my house and I must have watched it grow over the years as I grew myself.  Most likely it is maple wood? I decided against sanding it and also against finishing it with any product. I like the brutal feel of unrefined chisel strikes smoothed only by metal.   

Spirit Gonads

In this video, first I find a beautiful dead branch from an oak tree in my yard and inspect whether I can rebirth the branch into woodworking artwork.  After that, I show how I slowly shape it into Spirit Gonads. 

Spirit Vulva

I made a wooden vulva from a fallen branch of my Catalpa tree which lives in my backyard.  Because I grew up with this tree, we have a spiritual connection.  I carved legs and left the wood raw, unsanded and unfinished.  I also wanted to make the Spirit Vulva into a woodwind instrument that would make complex windy noises when I blew into it.  To do this, I harvested some cattails from the Arlington Great Meadows.  At the end of the video (click image below), I play my Wooden Spirit Vulva Instrument. 

Wooden Spirit Creatures Created as an Expression of Mindfulness

Throughout the pandemic, video conference calls and the grasping hands of my computer screen ensnared and captured my spirit.  The process of making these Spirit Creatures helped heal the torn flesh of my spirit through a practice of mindfulness. These creatures were mostly made underneath my table through tactile exploration while I was in video conference calls.  I would use my knife to slowly and rhythmically cut away at the wood which would keep my mind in the present moment and provide serenity.  The wood is from a cherry tree that lived in Lexington, MA.  I did not use any sandpaper and instead burnished it with my knife and finished it with wood butter. Eventually I will connect these to my mythological universe and create some sort of game.  Check out the video below:

Magicwand of SOMDEland

I was mesmerized by diseased growth that I found on fallen branches in the Arlington Great Meadows.  As I explored the wood, I uncovered a magic wand! And so was born the Magic Wand of SOMDEland.  SOMDEland is the name of my mythological universe that represents my subconscious.  This wand takes ideas from my subconscious and births them into reality through collaborations and community.  In this video, I describe how I made it and then how it magically works.  

Divine Rectum and Talon

While hiking, my eyes fell in love with a rotten log with a glorious hole with fine puckered lines that reminded me of a rectum.  As I explored this piece, I was surprised to find that everything was completely rotten except for the rectum which must have formed in response to an injury.  It made me think that sometimes injuries can be good because they make you heal stronger.  In this case, the only part of the log that survived was the part that was injured. I also found hairline cracks in the rectum and it reminded me of the time I got an anal fissure in 2017 because I was so nervous about defending my dissertation and especially for giving the graduate address that I was producing many frequent high velocity poops. 

Once I finished the piece, it resembled a talon and I wear it on my finger when I want to point at something of vast beauty in nature that perhaps people may find ugly (such as the log from which it came).  In this way the talon tears our mundane sense of reality and opens a way to treasure everything around us.  The wood was spectacular and I didn't need to sand it. I finished it with milk thistle oil. 

On another hike, Janet found a rotting branch with a mystical portal and gifted it to me.  I turned this into a talon that looks like an animal and my finger becomes the tongue of this creature.  

The Lighthouse of Reproduction

What if the underlying purpose and truth of our existence is defined only by Life, Death and Reproduction. What if if there is no true morality, god, art, science, falling in love, meditation, justice...what if they are all a side effect of optimizing survivalability in social creatures with big brains. What if there is nothing true and sacred and the sole purpose of our existence is reproduction and everything else is human arrogance. 

Made from MasterTreeIII (a linden tree), this sculpture represents the summation of fertility and reproduction. I decided to keep this creature mute, representing the possibility that humans have no say in the trajectory of their destiny...maybe we are just as helpless as every other creature in the flow of time. On the face is a symbol borrowed from hinduism (note: this piece is not representative of hinduism). There are two eyes with a third eye above it. Often this symbol is used to represent the divine mother. Here, the third eye represents an extra sense of perception, allowing the statue to see the patterns of life that govern our destiny. I carved these eyes out and then used a wood burning tool to scorch them black.  I very minimally sanded this piece. The breasts, I left completely unsanded because I liked the marks. To finish the piece I used "pure, unrefined, cold pressed 100% extra virgin coconut oil". I chose coconut oil because it is funny and because it has ritualistic significance.  At the base is a little erect penis and a larger divine vagina. It is hard to see from here, but this was the origin of another branch, as a result it has womb-like patterns of circles inside. 

The Germinating Genitalia 

Some of the ceremonial artwork described above uses the symbolic shapes of the penis and vagina to express the cycles of Life and Death and the cycles of Energy, reborn and recycled.  This piece (and the ones that follow) explores the undercurrent that flows through our unconscious and carries all of our thoughts, ambitions, and artwork, often saturated in sex and violence.  

Made from lilac, the back of the piece (left) is an erect penis with a primal flint-like look, as if it were stuck multiple times and chipped by Homo erectus.  I did not apply any sandpaper or finish to achieve smoothness and shininess, instead I rubbed it multiple times with my knife's blade.  The front of the piece (right) is a beautiful naturally occurring envagination covered in gorgeous bark.  This artwork is meant to be carried in the pocket and brought out to discuss the perpetual influence of sexual hormones diffusing throughout everything we do. 

Mother Earth

As the chainsaw tore into the body of MasterTreeIII, a sliver of wood fell off...refuse and waste...it was nearly trampled before I saved it.  Other than mildly sanding the center of the piece, I made no other alteration.  I see the profile of a pregnant Mother Earth (left picture).  Her body is wounded and scarred by the teeth of Humanity, symbolized by the angry chainsaw marks scratched on the surface.  Barely attached, her neck is cut, representing Humanity's potential to crash the cycles of nature.  She is still pregnant with Humanity (right picture).  Though unborn, Humanity is afflicted with godly power (the dark line in the center, right picture) that can give life to technology but can bring death to countless creatures.   But no matter how cursed, Humanity's destiny has not been written...our godly power is to write our own destiny in the flow of time. 

The Womb

Taken from MasterTreeIII (a linden tree), The Womb is made from the junction where a singular piece of wood branches into two, creating a beautiful vaginal ripple in the bark (right picture).  On the back (left picture), like a painting, is a dreamy mixture of colors and patterns.  On the bottom tip is a singular focal point surrounded by emanating rings that drift upwards.  Marked throughout the egg-shaped body are naturally occurring menstrual red lines and the spalted marks of a gorgeous fungal infection.  To each side of the piece are two other focal points (hard to see in this picture).  This represents how the mother starts with just her soul, but after pregnancy, breaks into two.