fault

2024
Walnut, copper rod, 23-gauge nails
36 x 50 x 5 inches

As artists we are all in conversation with the materials we use and our personal artistic proclivities. I find that responding to a materials unique traits creates a different kind of relationship with the resulting piece. Rather than telling the material what it will be, I chose to collaborate with a set of walnut boards that lived several lives before they were purchased and loaded into the bed of my truck.

Every woodworker is a collector. Every sculptor is hoarder. I have the unfortunate fate of being both. Among other things, I have a collection of lumber that I have amassed through the years from various craigslist ads and garage sales. I generally purchase large lots of boards that are rough sawn, making a mystery of what the wood will look like once it has been planed and sanded. Fault was born from a set of boards still had bark on them, but I could tell that the color was dark and rich with red undertones.

After processing the boards and cutting them down into ¼ x ¼ inch strips, I moved onto sanding the strips individually. It was then that I realized that each strip was breaking at least once. The boards all had a fault running through them creating the break point. This could have occurred in the process of growing, but most likely, these were fractures from when the tree was felled and made contact with the ground. But these fractures had also let in air and water over the years. like a tiny canyon, time and the elements smoothed what would typically be fibrous splintery hairs and tinted the wood charcoal black.

I laid the strips out in order of length and decided that rather than cut off the ragged edges, I would listen and respond to what this material offered me. I utilized their original lengths of the strips and formulated an object that could showcase each piece best. The design barrows from the aesthetics of 15th century cathedrals with buttress and vault-like forms, while it’s trestle structure feels more like function than form. The resulting object juxtaposes the visual language of the constructed and utilitarian world around us built of a softer, vulnerable, organic material, shaped by time.

In a time of glossy, uncanny, filtered perfection that we are spoon-fed daily, Fault embraces the reality of its makeup. Regardless of its rigid construction, its history is self-evident, inescapable, and beautiful in its fragility.