Through the Woods – Around the Block

Baschoue Cinquième (fifth basket)
Seven Stick Parallel Basket Construction

Juror’s Award – Through the Woods: Around the Block

This basket bowl was created for the Through the Woods: Around the Block exhibition at the The Lubeznik Center for the Arts, Michigan City Indiana, February 18th through April 10.

The Through the Woods, Around the Block show had the following requirement:

Starting with 2 identically sized indigenous, non-endangered solid wood blocks measuring  6x6x3, artists were asked to create an original piece from one block while leaving the other untouched.Juried by renowned woodturners Cindy Drozda and David Nittmann, the resulting exhibition of wood and object will provide a thought-provoking visual “before and after.”

When I first heard of this exhibit I knew that the basket look veneer work that I’ve been doing was perfect, fortunately I had two blocks of spalted maple left – one to transform and one to leave as is.

This construction uses seven parallels alternating (3,4) between layers of veneer. The parallel arrangement causes the visual energy to change from the tightly woven end view to a calmer side view. This is analogous to the experience of lathe work where cutting changes every quarter turn – side to end, easy to hard.