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| Art Awakened and Released
Improbable Art by an Improbable Artist
It is my passion to awaken and release the dormant art around me. Along the rocky, forested shoreline of High Rock Lake, I listen to the honking herons and cooing mourning doves sing to me. The morning mist reveals driftwood covered with a liquid diamond gleam in the slanted golden light of morning. My spirit searches below the green moss and dark mildew to find the dormant form within. I bring the sleeping driftwood home, and over many days, I feel it slowly awakening. One day I finally see what has slept there in the heartwood beneath the weathered exterior.
Taking mallet and chisels, knives and gouges, I work to release and set free the art that is within. I work with found hard wood, driftwood and deadfall such as cedar, oak, hickory, and black walnut from the shores and forests around High Rock Lake in Salisbury, NC. The grains, natural distress marks, and discolorations of found wood make each piece unique. I finish my work with clear lacquers or varnishes, or just paste wax to reveal the natural beauty and distinctiveness of each piece of wood. I use no stains or otherwise alter the natural color. From weathered, mossy, mildewed wood comes the most improbable of art.
I do not impose a design or preconceived notion on any piece of wood. I remove whatever hides the truth behind each surface. Soon enough, the art inside the wood and the art inside of me begins to speak to each other and the truth within the wood is awakened and waiting for me to release it. I found this need to release the art I see dormant in the wood around me late in my life after retiring from a lifetime of medical investigations and health care management. With no artistic training, I am the most improbable of artists working with the most improbable of materials.
After studying the art of wood sculpting, I have come to describe my work as a fusion of classical sculpture and the Carolina heritage arts of wood spirit carving. I have taught myself the techniques to use and frequently find that other woodcarvers believe I do things that you are not supposed to do. For instance, the hardwoods I use, instead of softwoods, are supposed to be too hard to use. I have frequently placed first, in whatever categories I have entered on juried wood carving shows. Now the world of juried art shows has warmly welcomed me and I wish to share the art I release. Currently my work is at the Crossnore Gallery in Crossnore, NC that supports the abused, abandoned, and neglected children at the Crossnore School.
As a former hospital investigator, published writer and poet, and professor, I learned that truth is immutable. Truth is beauty, and beauty is the pure essence of a thing or idea. My work strives to uncover and release that essence. The art that emerges from within a piece of slimy, weathered wood is affirmation of the beauty within each of us.
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