A tree never loses a wound. Its growth is always additive, encapsulating, hiding, recovering, but never forgetting. Because my work is always subtractive, revealing what is already present in the tree, it necessarily becomes contemplative. Before I make the first cut into a fresh tree trunk, I peel back layers of annual rings in my mind, like a virtual onion. As layers are removed, surprises expose themselves: colors, branch buds, old traumas. Like the tree, which also has no say in such matters, I work with it.

Using diseased, termite infested wood adds another layer of growth: colony nests take forms reminiscent of old cave dwellings and underground rivers, weaving their way through the once living tissue, creating challenges for making hollow vessels, already fragile in conception.

I am further pressing this tendency by selectively encouraging fungal growth and other decay cycles.

Because the lives of individuals and societies are by their very nature complex, chaotic, simple classical forms allow the tree to speak with clarity. I am repeatedly drawn into the stories they tell. At completion I can hardly believe I created a thing of such beauty, and of course I didn't. To see more multi-axis bowls, go here.

"Have you seen my surgery?", 12" Dia x 11 1/2" H

Untitled walnut hollow form, 8 1/2" Dia x 15" H

"Split Decisions", 10" Dia x 13" H

"Even in my most tender moments", 6" Dia x 16" H

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