Barnacles

Tree: Dogwood, Holmdel, NJ

Height: 30 inches

I collected this piece from a property where I was pruning an apple orchard for a friend of my cousin. Arborists were removing and chipping a big maple tree, and when we took a break for lunch, I noticed the crew chipping branches with distinctly different leaves, those of a dogwood. It turns out that a very large, old, and rotten dogwood had fallen over, and the crew was nice enough to let me take several logs for sculpting.

Barnacle stands upside down; the "top" is where the trunk contacted the ground and decayed. The sculpture closely follows the main features present in the starting log: it was hollow inside from years of decay, and the twisting flares follow deep cracks in the trunk, which had only an inch or two of thickness. I merely cleaned out the decay and left a hint of light, creamy, punky wood and some dark staining. The striking external feature of the log was a “burl” formed from the yearly sprouting of suckers two feet from the ground. I decided to expose as much of the wood grain formed from such intergrowth while still leaving some of the natural surface as a reminder of the tree’s history.

I originally thought a good name for this piece was "coral," but the wife of the master sculptor I met in Gettysburg suggested "barnacles," and the name stuck.