A Small Bowl

When you gotta make something you gotta make something. It's a blessing and a curse, the fairly constant stream of ideas and images and possibilities. It's been cultivated over a lifetime I suppose. I go for a while and then there is this pull to try to make one of them; to try to make something beautiful. But working full time and weekend chores doesn't leave a lot of time for it so this time I picked something small, something I thought I might finish with just an hour here and there.

Small Bowl
Walnut 12" x 5" x 4"

This piece went a little differently than my usual pattern. I usually have a well defined idea, maybe drawings and templates that I have done before I start. But this time there was just a rough idea and the piece of wood determined much of what I could do and generated ideas as I went.

Bark beetles bore into trees just beneath the bark leaving tunnel trails in the sapwood. Sometimes a chunk of wood looks fine until you remove some material to reveal these voids. So it was with this piece and with embellishment they became the hieroglyphics on the side - the undecipherable message from another species.