Lifeline Series - Carved Wood
We all start out with a plan in mind. You can picture the road ahead of you – straight and clear.
Then we begin the work of living. And the path forward is not what we expected.
This new body of work springs forth from the past few difficult years in my personal life. I’m so invigorated to be turning a new page and getting back to the work I love in the studio. I've been thinking a lot about the re-calibration of dreams and expectations, about love and loss, about perspective, and about life and its twists and turns.
There are the paths you’ve mapped out. Then there is the actual path you are on.
The process of making these pieces is very much a metaphor for my thinking. There is a plan in mind and the straight, designed lines represent such a conceit. They are laid out and set with the same reflective glass beads used for road markers. You may catch a glint of them as you walk by the pieces or when the light catches at just the right moment. And once the room is quiet and dark enough, you may see a faint glow to the line reminding you that those guides are always there for you, absorbing energy in brighter moments and giving you guidance in the shadows.
When I take the tool to the material and begin carving, I only loosely lead the line and sometimes the line leads me. The grain of the material often resists and kicks me back a bit and, in the moment, I intuitively find a way around certain spots. Lines cross and sometimes become entangled in each other, like ropes, and then part ways – now flowing like rivers. The raw wood is set with clear resin preserving the excavated material with its knots, flaws, and burrs. Some pieces have a metallic thread inlaid into the resin – representing the thread of an individual’s story. Each path has its own quirky charm and characteristics.
When the piece is completed, zoom out, step back and contemplate which one of these elements is more interesting and resonant - the designed line or the organic one.
I think of them as data visualization charts of a life’s history. Funny thing is, in the creation, I’m really just winging it – such is life, a wholly organic phenomenon.
