The Fine Art of Wood, The Bohlen Collection
An excerpt from the book, 'The Fine Art of Wood, The Bohlen Collection', published in Summer 2000. Introduction by Bonita Fike, Associate Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Contemporary artist Dennis Elliott expresses a similar rapport:
“Pondering a burl that was once a living part of a tree, I treat the cutting of it like a diamond. Knowing this piece of wood was, and can be again, a thing of beauty. I'm obliged to the wood, it's not obliged to me.” Elliott's relief, created by cutting horizontally through the big-leaf maple burl, could be a metaphor for life itself: the inner circles suggest the annual rings that protect the heartwood or essence of life, the carved lines radiating out from the center recall the life-giving rays of the sun that sustain life, and the irregular outline of the tree trunk reminds us of the uncertain nature of all life.”
 Updated November 10, 2009 |
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