Veering

Well, I pretty much knew that sooner or later I would begin to veer away from carving "only spoons"...  But actually I'm not sure if I need to say "away" because after all, it might just be that what I am doing is a sort of parallel exploration of the very same things I do when carving a spoon.

Take for instance a sculpture.  You begin with a piece of wood.  You look at it, you try to imagine the dynamic of the grain within, all the the different types of surprises that might emerge as you start to move your touch into the wood.

At first there might not even be a very clear idea of what you want to create.  At first there might be a thought, or a sense of something imagined.  At first there is the block of wood.  It might be a block of wind-curled pine from a tree that grew on the slope of a hill that overlooked a barren shoreline on the west coast of Finland.  There is beauty.  There is everything that can be imagined.

And you continue to move various blades upon the surface, and the surface begins to change its shape.  Flows begin to emerge.  They are the same flows, whether it's a spoon, a door handle or a woman's hip.  Everything flows, and the flows carry you further into the surfaces that continue to change with each caress...