Oak carving at Wood Sculpture Live

Published by Maurice van Cooten, posted 23 May 2011

In my previous post some weeks ago now, I’ve documented the development of the Oak wood carving.

Oak carving finished for the Wood Sculpture Live exhibition.

Carving for me is discovering. An archeologist excavates to find a buried artifact. When I carve, I have the notion that the sculpture is within the material, stone or wood.

There’s intention behind the piece too, I can be inspired by a piece of writing, or a song. I make models of clay as a sketch, the end result shouldn’t be a replica of the model, a sculptor looks for potential areas of development while working on the sculpture. The piece can surprise you too. With organic material like wood or stone is there can be rot or cracking, you can take too much away. A dynamic approach is an advantage, listening to the piece, is part of the problem solving process an artist encounters along the way.

I use a combination of hand and power tools, it’s perhaps the speed and meditative tock of the chisel and hammer that allow me to be most connected and reflective about the sculpture as I work it. Power tools are much about the clear cut decisions. It helps speed up the process an advantage for carving at symposia with limited time restraints.

Some symposia work very different in this way. They want you to execute a piece that’s proposed as sketch or model. This does help with the time constraint as well. Reflection and decisions take time with a sculpture, often time you don’t have at carving events.

I look forward to carving at another symposium in the future, even though they’re noisy, dusty and all about hard work. It’s an incredible liberating space, a playground with big kids and their toys, megalomanic ideas and adequate size to execute them.

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