Art on the Walls: Douglas Green
BCAA Art on the Walls exhibit "Marquetry" featuring the works of Douglas Green.
| WHERE: | Barnes & Noble Cafe | |
| RECEPTION: | Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - 5:30pm | |
| RUNS THROUGH: | Saturday, February 28, 2009 | |
| ARTIST WEBSITE: | www.spiritofthegrain.com |
I have long loved the landscapes of the Prairies and the West, and it no longer surprises me when I see them in the grain and figure of the woods of the special trees and boards I avidly seek. My Landscape Marquetry is the result. My Rock Art Marquetry is something else. Rock Art is universal to being human, and I do enjoy interpreting these ancient art forms in wood. See if they don't speak to you, too.
I'm a woodworker. I'm an artist. I'm a marquetarian.
Marquetry is the ancient art of creating scenes using very think slices of wood, called veneers. The veneers are cut apart, one piece at a time, to create each individual element of a scene, no matter how small, then glued together, one at a time, into a large think sheet forming the scene as a whole. This is then glued to a substrat using a veneer press, sanded out, finished, and framed ready for hanging. Marquetry is not inlay, that's a very different form.
My process starts with a tree. Not all trees are alike, even sibling trees from the same parent growing side by side in the forest can have different exposures, drainage, sunlight, and tap different mineral deposits. They grow in their own way. Branching patterns respond to the environment. Diseases and insect attack. Lightening strikes, storms break limbs, the tree heals and defends itself. As with people, what we live through produces our character. I've been working wood for over 40 years, and I've never seen two trees just alike.
Sometimes, not often, something special happens to a particular tree. It produces wood with very fine character. To be able to see into a tree from the outside, to recognize that if I cut it this way it will look like this, but if I cut it that way, right there, it will bring something special to the surface of a board, is both a product of experience, and a gift of vision. When I cut such a tree, or when wood from such finds its way to me, I try to honor it in my work.
Sometimes a board speaks to me. It's a visual language that defies words. The board sparks a vision of what it can be, and my task is to work with the wood to allow it to become. I see within the wood all the ancient elements of Nature: The textures of the Earth, the wind rippling waves on water and through fields of grain, I see fire in the sky, the wood ablaze with flames that don't consume. I cut the tree into boards, and sometimes these boards can take years to dry before they can be worked. Then I cut the boards into veneers. Then I cut the veneers into marquetry.
Moonscape |
Arch |
Harvest Scene |
Sunset |
