In the 1980s when we lived in the
mountains in the Sierra Nevada in California, our neighbor, Fred, carved this gnarly man for us. We unpacked him the other day and hung him on our wood retaining wall in our front yard. I started thinking about how trees grow in so many different shapes and sizes with burls, knots, and growth rings, hence my choice of the word gnarly. I thought about all the uses trees provide such as the raw material for art, shade, fruit, furniture, and homes.
Trees also clean the air by absorbing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen.
After we unloaded the lumber for my painting projects I was inspired to make this gnarly tree bowl. The bowl is about eleven inches in diameter and about three inches deep. We had an electrician over yesterday and it won't be overly expensive to get the wiring done for a kiln so he's coming today for that. So it looks like I'll be getting a kiln after all.
We couldn't think of a place to store the gnarly wood we got yesterday so we put it under my studio table. It's not optimum but I wanted to keep the wood in a dry location out of the weather. All the wood I am getting has been harvested from dead or downed trees. It has been kiln dried and cut to lengths and widths manageable for my purposes. Gary worked at a mill in Arkansas and we learned the lengths of wood placed under the stack are called
'stickers'. These are used to keep lumber up off the ground and also used between stacks of lumber to keep air circulating around them.
I chose several sections of
Eastern red cedar,
sycamore, and
walnut. As we loaded the wood into my car I couldn't help thinking some of the pieces would make a beautiful natural edge table top. Who knows where this recent foray into wood will take me. I'll pull off the stack one piece at a time and set it up on saw horses and belt sand the pieces. Then I'll fine sand them. Next I'll stain them with a water based stain and then I'll paint on them. Of course today I'm wondering what I've gotten myself into. We shall see. Stay tuned for more details. Thanks for reading and for all your comments.
