Requiesco

Why this one exists

What pulled me into this ash was the tone break between the pale outer wood and the dark heartwood, so the shape was never going to be a circle. I wanted something that felt like the ace of clubs. Dead centre of the blank, a small branch had been growing, and as the bowl dried the branch shrank and left a natural cavity right in the bottom. The result is oddly symmetrical, which is not a thing I usually aim for.

This is a bowl that is meant to be handled. The texture on the outside, the way it settles into your palm when you pick it up: a feast for the eyes and for the fingers. And one more thing that matters to me. Ash is notorious for cracking as it dries, and of every piece I have ever carved, this is the only one that has never cracked at all, not even slightly. As if it found the shape it wanted to be in and rested. Finished with my beeswax and oil blend. The tree grew in Gimli.

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