Baffled

Awards: First Place, Art Alliance Juried Show, 2015

Tree: Spalted Sugar Maple Burl, Jersey Shore, PA

Dimensions: 29" wide

The source for this sculpture is the same as the bowl commissioned by Mr. Osborne. The bowl required the most sound portion of the burl so that it would not fall apart during sculpting. The remaining portion of the burl contained many deep cracks, fissures, and trapped bark and included the original 7"-diameter tree trunk around which the burl grew. I slowly cleaned out the decay in the deep cracks and crevices in order to find wood sound enough to retain in the sculpture. What evolved was a labyrinth of interconnected curved surfaces. The final sculpting process was a matter of finding a good balance between the remaining wood and open spaces.

A lot of spalting, or the initial stage of fungal attack, not only produced the black lines typically associated with spalted maple but also gave a rich variation of red and brown colorations. The log had dried for several years, so it was not possible to find any exterior bark attached to the wood; most of the bark trapped within the burl was badly decayed, but I retained a small sample, which I hardened with polyurethane.

This sculpture can stand in at least four orientations, which give very different feels to the piece.

I originally planned to name this piece "Perplexed," as that is how I felt about naming it. My daughter Laurie, who has so expertly done my website for me, had the more creative name, "Baffled," which is a nice play on both the forms and my feelings towards naming.