CHARRED WOOD OBJECTS
CHARRED WOOD OBJECTS
This work is an ongoing collaboration with Paula Meijerink.
Sculpture you can rest on? Furniture that invites contemplation? Yes and yes. Charred Wood Objects are multi-hyphenate things. They exist to be looked at and felt; their soft forms also suggest a multitude of ways to sit down, lay back, or climb up.
The shapes of Charred Wood Objects are as unique as one tree is to the next, but there is one mark they all share: they are charred. Burned. Scorched to a deep, obsidian black following an ancient Japanese wood preservation technique called Yakisugi.
First, logs are pulled from a pile of felled trees and diverted from the Ohio State University waste stream. The specimens we work with are selected for their idiosyncratic forms—hollow tubes, forking trunks, creature-like limbs.
Next, the logs are stripped of their bark. This can take hours or it can take days depending on the species of tree and how long it’s been left to weather. With an old hackberry a simple bark spud will do. A fresh cottonwood demands a mason hammer and chisel.
With the bark removed, the inner life of a tree is daylit: compression wrinkles from heavy limbs; labyrinthine galleries of borer larvae; constellations of pockmarks from woodpeckers searching for grubs.
The shaping process preserves a log’s attributes by enhancing them: excavating decay, amplifying a hollow, softening a jagged burl, smoothing a flat expanse for sitting, gouging a stump to hold rainwater. This work is done using a combination of electric chainsaws, grinders, and sanders.
*PA
*PA
*PA
Each piece is charred in the style of Yakisugi woodwork, a Japanese method of preservation. The carbonized surface renders the wood water resistant, protects against fungi and mold, and makes the surface indigestible to termites and beetles.
*PA
*PA
*PA
After charring, a log is wiped with wet cloths to remove ash and soot from its surface and finished with a natural seed oil.
*PA
*PA
Finished pieces can weigh hundreds to thousands of pounds, so each one is wrapped in heavy blankets and lifted into place by a forklift with a telescoping boom. Below, a log is placed at Prairie with Nine Rooms on Ohio State’s north campus.
Photos noted with *PA are property of Phil Arnold. All others are property of Present Practice.