"Birdseye Sleigh"
Inspired from a richly stylized carving on one of the sleigh shafts, in the Oseberg ship find. This is the second sculpture in this style that the sculptor was drawn to and chose to render. The embellishments of the sculptures heads are reminiscent of Goslings. The sculptor’s selection of Redwood Burl to express this piece was intended to add the illusion of feather patterns to its body. The holographic properties of the selected material only became pleasingly apparent to the sculptor during the piece’s final phases.
Note:
Prior to and during the Pleistocene Period, the redwood tree grew in most of the world’s land mass. Today these giants only reside naturally in isolated groves in Northern California’s coastal valleys, where time has made contrasts due to Pacific Ocean currents, stabilizing the climate through thousands of years so that trees of a geologic past are still here for us to view, bathed in cool Pacific fog. The grain of these trees can be straight or curly, however the rare burl or lesion, that forms on these trees exteriors produces a knotty whirl pool of circular grain patterns highly prized by artisans. One of the tallest of these trees is 43 miles north of the artist’s home its trunk is 20 ft in diameter with a height of over 264 ft. It began to grow during the reign of Julius Caesar.
(72" x 38" x 3")