Work in Progress

This end-grain cut of black cherry was pulled from our firewood pile. Its subtle arc and the contrast between the pale sapwood and the red-brown heartwood recommended it for sculpture work. The pseudo-arc was the result of the wood-splitting process - either the representing the weaker lines of the end grain or how the wood-splitter fell, or both. The sap-to-heart contrast is endemic to all mature black cherry trees.

What is the work of wood sculpture? It’s finding a way to shape something beautiful from what at first glance appears to be an uninteresting chunk of wood, good only for throwing in the fire. One cannot simply save it from the fire and leave it as is. What would be the point of that?! Once it’s aside, it must undergo a shaping, a removal process. This process echoes the earlier process the tree experienced as its lower branches died off or were removed in order to facilitate growth. This process unveils the wood’s true character underneath the dust and grit it accumulated in the wood pile and gives it more dimension.

This work is fundamentally relational. I impose my will upon the wood, through eye, muscle, and tools, while the wood responds in accordance with its grain, hardness, and knots. My will is limited to the wood’s character; therefore, my will is continually being shaped by the character of the wood. It is an unseen exchange, a call and response. At times, I relent. Other times, I use stronger tools to bring about the changes needed to make the piece more symmetrical, more proportional in relation to itself.

Recent happenings

Last week Bethany and I visited an artist residency center hidden in the middle of Fredericktown, Ohio, called Open Wabi (https://openwabi.com/). Three artists were in residency during this open house: one from Long Island, one from Kansas, and one from Wooster. All painters. Cool space. Good people. Was wonderful to meet Jason and Tricia, as well as the artists. Next open house is July 26. If you plan on going, let us know.

In other news, I’m finishing a commission for fellow Knox County art-lovers Chris and Leah Miller. Can’t wait to show them their new relief sculpture.

Still Livin' in the Country

Dem Dang Deer

Dem dang deer ate sum blueberries, sum leaves off uh new apple tree, and (the wurst part) d’even ate most leaves off dat dare elm tree we planted for Elowyn (whose name means Elm tree in Cornish).

Never had problems with deer eating things until now. I surrounded the five-foot tall elm tree with a five-foot tall metal fence that I picked up at a garage sale.

Dem Coons

Raccoons were nesting in the loft of our shed. Drove Milosz nuts. The interwebs said that raccoons don’t like Epsom salt. So, I tossed a lump of it into the loft. Seconds later a tiny raccoon cub fell from the loft onto the shed floor. When I checked later that night, two baby raccoons were on the shed floor. The next day, there were no raccoons in the shed. Milosz is back to his cool, calm self.

Dem snakes

Got a little family of snakes in one of our flower beds. They seem nice. 

Crop dustin'

Memorial Day morning, while cooking breakfast, I suddenly heard a loud engine noise coming from the yard.  Seconds later, out the window, I saw a huge bird-like shadow, then a small bright colored airplane swoop down into our backyard and the adjacent farm field. At its lowest point it must have been only 20 feet off the ground – at least, that’s how it looked – which means it may have flown directly over our roof by the same distance. When over the field, it sprayed something. Over the next 15 minutes it continued looping over the farm field that surrounds our house.

First time this has happened. Don’t know if the fields are too muddy for the heavy equipment? We kept Milosz and Elowyn inside for the rest of the morning to avoid the potential of chemical drift.

Night walkers (dem darn cows)

A few weeks ago, our neighbor walked over to our yard and asked if I noticed any hoof prints. I hadn’t. He said that his whole yard was full of cow hoof prints: huge, sinking six to eight inches in the muddy soil. He turned his head toward a corner of our yard and spotted some tracks. We walked over and sure enough, it looked like two cows wandered into a section of our yard. They were probably the cows from the dairy across the street. Must of got through a break in the fence. I wish I could have seen those cows wandering around Leedy Rd. in the dark, walking back and forth between our yards, chillin’ out, snackin’ on grass.  

Battery-powered.... Socks

At a garage sale I noticed a bin of wool socks. I tend to buy these (even though they are used), since brand new wool socks are often super thick, expensive, and not always as warm as the older kinds of wool socks, which are often thinner, warmer, and less than $1.00 per pair. There was a pair with little pouches on either side of the upper sections. The guy at the table explained, “Those were my dad’s. They’re battery powered. You put a 9 volt in each pouch, snap it shut, and it’ll warm the foot, especially around the toes.” I wouldn’t have bought it except that he offered me the whole box of 14 pairs for about $4. Can’t beat that with a stick.

Outhouses, no cars

Earlier this fall, a red Cadillac SUV slowly drove by our property on a Sunday afternoon. It drove by again. Then it stopped right in front of our house. I was doing yard work and meandered over to the road. The driver saw me and motioned for me to come closer, which I did, still keeping some distance.

He said that he used to work on this property when the Fishers owned it. He worked in the slaughterhouse, he said, motioning to our gardenhouse (which we had heard was a slaughterhouse). He said people would come to the slaugherhouse with chickens or pigs or deer and that it was a community place. He said that the land was good for growing wild berries and that there were many raspberries and blackberries around the house. He said people would come to pick berries, and that every weekend there was a community dinner at a nearby park, and that people came to the picnics on horseback, coach, or horse-drawn sled. He said that it wasn’t a modern place – that when he went to college in 1955 (Baldwin Wallace, I think he said) it was the first time he used an indoor toilet. It was a community, he kept saying, along with it’s all different, it’s all so different, in disbelief. He asked if we bought the place from the Fishers. I said it was the Parkers. He looked down and shook his head, which I took as an indication that he didn’t know them.

I wasn’t sure how to proceed. He didn’t ask me many questions. The woman in the passenger seat, presumably his wife, didn’t say anything and looked completely annoyed. She glared at me, as if to say, “I don’t give a damn about any of this.” (Though, my interpretation may be a little off.) Had she been a bit engaged; had she asked me something, or demonstrated interest, I may have asked them to pull into our driveway and talk for a bit. But, she didn’t, so I didn’t. The guy and I wished each other well and he drove off.

Rolling Logs Uphill

When people know you carve wood, they offer you free wood. A guy in Gambier offered me two bitternut hickory trees that came down in his woods during a storm; both with long, straight, thick trunks. All I needed to do was chainsaw them into logs, mill them into boards, and haul them off. Easy-peasy.

 I enlisted a neighbor, who is an avid woodworker and owns a portable mill (that one can hitch to the back of a pick-up truck), to help me out. Steve and I rode down to Gambier a few weeks ago. With his mammoth chainsaw, he cut five 8ft long logs from one tree. We pivoted the trunks up a small muddy incline to his portable mill (which had to rest on flat land), using polls with a sharp point at the end and a movable hook. The point and hook allowed one to exert leverage to roll the log up hill. Standing behind the log at each end, we alternated pivoting the log up the slope, then placed them in rows.

 Then Steve got the machine started. We rolled a log onto the metal arms along the ground. The arms lifted the log and set it on a long shaft. He set the depth of the cut and walked the arching metal and band-saw blade across the length of the log. He shaved off the bark first. Then he cut the boards at a 1.75 inch depth. The machine rotated the log a couple times to shave off more bark. I slid each newly cut board off of the machine as Steve pulled back the movable blade. I stacked the boards next to the barn. Got 30 boards out of it, mostly 8 to 10 inches wide, 8 ft long. A few weeks later, we came back to haul them up to the homestead. Stacked them in the garage with a rotating fan on them constantly.