This series of small wooden carvings explores the relationship of time to growth in wood. Some of the first carving I have done some time, I am reminded of certain pleasures of working without machines. No noise, no dust. Carving is an intuitive and visceral method of form finding - an example of what David Pye termed the workmanship of risk. 

 

Shaped by the tree's growth rings, sculpted forms isolate specific periods of time within the grain structure. These forms represent a tree's prior appearance at some moment in time - a lost history of sorts. The material structure of the tree is understood as a serious of distorted, nested cones rather than simple concentric circles. More importantly, these surfaces can only be made by a person slowly removing matieral until just the moment when the growth ring reveals itself. When a 3D printer can spit out anything you can model in rhino, I like to remember that certain things are still best done by hand out of solid material.