Pine - Steinbach - 8"

Why this one exists

Barn wood, with a lifetime of weather still on it. I kept the old patina in place on part of this piece and carved through to the warmth underneath everywhere else, so it wears both of its lives at once: the grey, storied skin the prairie gave it, and the bright grain that has been waiting underneath all along. Pine smells heavenly on the bench, all resin and sunlight. And the form is another study in my favourite conversation, square and circle working together. Of the ten pieces of that barn that came to me, this vase and one other piece are all that remain.

It stood here

My neighbour a few doors down loves a late-night fire, and one of their friends had access to an enormous amount of barn wood from a barn pulled down near Steinbach. I noticed the neat pile and made my kind of deal: ten pieces of old barn pine in exchange for two carved vases. Wood that framed a prairie barn for generations was headed for the fire pit; some of it became this instead. The pin points toward Steinbach, not at any doorstep.

Every side of it