Ceres

Ceres

Black Cherry – February 25 – April 6, 2013 – 31 x 16 x 8 inches

In the past, on figurative studies, I simply used my own reckoning to determine the parameters of a figure within a wood block. Anatomical drawings copied from Gray's Anatomy and other sources were my principle guides. Since Alison downloaded Daz, I can now pose a model in a way that appears likely to fit within my billet, superimpose that pose on photos of my wood block and see much more clearly what might fit. Daz's Victoria 4 posed to fit within my block suggested a figure about to swing an object forward. Because the parameters of that object were determined by the zone of grain transition, and because the location of that zone wasn't completely evident until I cut into it, I revised Victoria's pose several times, eventually deciding to have her take up the full height of the block. Before Daz, I would not have attempted a conventional figurative study with such a complex block. I would have used such a block to make a more freely developing form, such as Dimensional Window, shown further down the page.

Red arrows in the photo below show grain direction. The living tree would have been oriented upside down to how Ceres is positioned. The mass on the right is the beginning of a large limb which branched off the main trunk. All wood has a certain amount of a tough substance called lignin to give extra strength to its main bulk - cellulose vessels. Wherever a limb branches off, to give it extra support, there is a lot more lignin branching off in a multitude of directions. The area marked zone of grain transition is such a place. Shaping such areas is problematic because the wood there doesn't chip away predictably. That's why I did as little as possible to this part of the billet and didn't attempt to shape it into any recognizable object.

To me it more nearly resembles an agricultural implement than anything else, so I decided to call the finished figure Ceres, after the Roman goddess of agriculture.

Dimensional Window

Dimensional Window

Cherry – December 24, 2007 – February 18, 2008 – 31 x 12 x 10.5 inches

In the sci-fi trilogy His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman has characters stepping through dimensional windows from one part of space time to another. As he describes them, these windows are more or less like ordinary rectangular windows, conveniently floating close enough to the ground for people to step through them. If such windows really existed, there is no reason they would conform in appearance to our conventional concept of a window. They probably wouldn't look like this wood carving either, but that falls under the heading of artistic license.

I included this carving on the same page as Ceres because, as with Ceres, the original block included branching grain transition. In Dimensional Window, the wood is oriented right side up in the finished carving rather than upside down, as in Ceres. In looking at the carvings separately, I thought both might have originated from opposite sides of the same block. Studying them both on the same page, I can see that the branching angle in Dimensional Window is more acute than in Ceres and the cross cuts were in different spots relative to the branch.

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