Generositas

Why this one exists

This came from another Gimli tree, one that stood right beside a fire pit. The owner hung their barbecue tongs from a nail in its trunk and strung lights in its lower branches, and it looked at that same lake sunrise every morning it grew. I got six vases out of that stretch of the trunk. The other five have sold. This is the last one.

I do not use a lathe, so nothing here is symmetrical, and I prefer it that way. Otherwise I would go to IKEA. Every facet is a gouge cut, and with side light on it the surface reads subtly different from every angle. The darker patches are where branches once grew out of the main trunk, and the voids are the tree’s own. It was quite a young tree. Like most of my work, it is a piece that is yearning to be handled. Finished with my beeswax and oil blend. She is named for the generosity of spirit I have known around that fire pit.

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