Woodcarving

I love working with wood for so many reasons. It’s like a 4-D historical map, a living artifact that tells you stories of how it grew, where it grew, what happened while it grew, what else grew nearby.  Carving wood reveals layers of time and evidence of drama. It scars, it heals, it communicates like skin.  It is so responsive and so alive. It is a good communicator, which makes for a good collaborator in a material- it has an opinion about how it wants to move, and it will show you.

Early in my training I apprenticed with Pak Sadra, a woodcarver in the artists colony of Ubud, Bali, Indonesia.