Wood Against the Grain

When transformed into a work of art or fabricated as an object, wood often conveys information about the development of technique and craft. The material also has the potential to unearth stories about the world around it, including the pursuit of natural resources, the harvesting and transportation of timber, and strategies to deter critters from feasting on the fibrous organic material. Particular species of wood are often entangled with the identity and conditions of a region, such as the association of Northern European limewood with sculpture made by German artists, while certain types of wood are coveted from overseas. For example, demand for mahogany in North America depleted Jamaican forests and cleared the land for vast industrialized plantations. As the array of works assembled here demonstrate, artists habitually master the most challenging resistance capacities of woods. Durable fruitwoods with their compact grains and tensile strength can be worked to achieve delicate and complex ornamentation, for example. Artists have also considered the concealment of wood’s physical properties as a form of illusion or dissimilation to disrupt expectations about artifice and nature.