Pierced Maple - St. Boniface - 12"

Why this one exists

This maple came from the tree that grew just south of the St. Boniface golf course, and this is the seventh bowl I managed to get out of what came from that lady’s backyard. It did not start life like this. The first version was thick, with carved ribs, and I showed it around and there were no takers. So it went back on the bench for a revivification: from thick and heavy to light and air.

The holes are not symmetrical and the circles are not perfect, on purpose. I am not a fan of symmetry. A thing needs to breathe to have a life of its own, and this one has that. What I love most is the shadow it casts when it sits under light, and the idea that it is both there and not there at the same time. It is a working fruit bowl, finished with my own wax and oil blend. Pierced bowls are the hardest ones on the bench: holding a thin wall steady while you cut holes through it is a very easy way to crack it, so they take patience and subtlety more than force.

It stood here

I found this tree from the air. I was shooting an acreage just outside Steinbach for a real estate listing, and while the drone was up I spotted a wood pile you could see from altitude: thirty feet by sixty, a dozen feet tall, everything the owner had salvaged after a tornado took his trees down. In that pile was willow. I asked, and drove home with three pieces. Sometimes the camera finds the wood. The pin marks Steinbach's edge; the acreage itself stays private.

Every side of it