Hewn was made for the exhibition, Forging a Link: Metalsmiths Respond to the Mercer Collection (Mercer Museum, 2019) and inspired by the Mercer Museum’s collection’s pre-industrial artifacts, abundant with wooden tools bearing their makers’ marks. Hewn’s hyper-wrought surface is a form of propaganda - an elegy to skilled workers whose hands were on everything. I am deeply interested in the effects of craft and histories embedded in the made object.
References to wood emerge throughout my work, sometimes to connect to nature or to manufacture. The sculpture, Wooden (2007) is a precursor to Hewn, as it seeks to portray some kind of whittled centerpiece, a jewel log. Other examples can be seen in Trunk Sections (see Cast) or in the veneered aspect of Mantelpiece and other works from the Bisections series (see Sliced.)
