Background

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I am a self-taught sculptor with no formal training in art. I've worked with wood for many years non-professionally on projects around the house and grew to admire especially the colors of Eastern Red Cedar, Black Walnut, and Red Maple. I am also a professor of political science and teach political philosophy.

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Artistic Process

 

Philosophically, I am intrigued by the relationship between entropy or decay and disorder and human efforts to cope with it. This struggle informs my approach to sculpture insofar as I work exclusively with fallen trees and branches in varying degrees of decay. I begin by taking off the bark and removing rotten material to see what the sapwood or heartwood looks like. This alone will often suggest a form for the sculpture. In other cases I have a well-formed idea of the shape I want and start roughing out the design on the de-barked piece from sketches and clay models. And of course there are many intermediate cases: I start with a general concept, but it changes more (or less) dramatically as I work on the wood. In fact, even if the basic contour and form of a planned idea is fully executed, it has always been altered and influenced along the way by what I discover in the wood as I go. Sometimes this takes the form of a constraint -- unexpected rotten wood, for example, which prevents making an intended edge or raised area. Often, however, it is an incentive (seduction, really) -- a surprising seam of contrasting color or a knot suggests a new possibility. In all cases, I let the wood's own color speak, finishing with oil and no stains.