You're Invited to the Ways of Wood: The PA Rural Arts Alliance Exhibit

You're Invited to The Ways of Wood:

Art Opening: August 16th from 6-8PM

Exhibit From August 16th-September 14th

Wood is a foundational material in folk and traditional art. Its various capacities can be applied to turning bowls and art objects, building structures and furnishings, carving utilitarian or fanciful objects, and constructing instruments that in practiced hands produce beautiful music. A musical form that carries the romance and heartache of people growing on the same land as oaks, maples, cherries and butternuts.

Rural Pennsylvania. Northern Appalachia. Alleghenies. Laurel Highlands, Penn’s Woods, and lands inhabited and cared for by the Lenape and Seneca. Where we live has many names. In our neighborhood of many names, “folk” objects made from wood are placed in high esteem. They might have a utilitarian function or be decorative, and much of the time both. Woodlands that produce this treasured material are passionately regarded both as refuge habitat and precious harvest. Therefore, is it any surprise at all that the title of our next exhibition is plural? Ways of Wood.

What is it like to look “inside” a wood-crafted art work? How can one look at a bowl or a jewelry box, or even a violin as one would look at an oil or a watercolor painting? Consider this. How is it arranged? The still life or landscape painting is formatted on the canvas just so, and so are the parts of the bowl or even the back of the violin. That abstract painting is arranged to explore color or texture or line, evoking a response to them as our eyes move across it. So, too, the edges and mass of an abstract wood piece encourage our eyes to move around and across it. To caress it with our imagination.

When I look at the installation of folk art selected by the Pennsylvania Rural Arts Alliance in Ways of Wood I also get a perspective through the lens of the materials chosen by the maker. While it may be unusual to consider the source minerals and pigments of a painting, the types and sources of wood for an artwork are part of the pleasure of viewing it. Why this piece of butternut or hickory? Was the artist pushing the boundaries of how the spalling in the wood fibers would respond to the tools that were used to create it? And what natural or man-made experiences did that tree absorb as it grew over its twenty five, or two hundred years? Are these not worthy of celebrating?

FUN FACT: Did you know that spalted wood holds fast a particular moment in time? As wood decays it is invaded by fungus. Wood artists choose their material at particular stages of decay, resulting in ornamental staining and patterns that make their art work unique, satisfying and often spectacular.