I started this project with a plan inspired by Gustav Klimt’s tree of life. I tried to carve the limbs of the tree into my small section of a tree. Unfortunately this did not go as well as planned.. it took me hours to carve thin, shallow wells into my piece of wood. I saw the colorful dots in the center of the tree of life to look a lot like skittles and figured I could make tree branches that could hold skittles. I used the wood burner to make branch designs and then painted over them, thinking they would still be visible, they weren’t. The final result was a painted shallow plate adorned in flowers filled with skittles.
After hearing about my classmates success with tools like the dremel and working with the grain, rather than against it, I went back to the drawing board or BeAM for that matter. I asked BeAM staff for a new piece of wood, but they weren’t sure what to do so they called over the program coordinator. While I was waiting I dug though the trash and found my old piece of wood that I had used to practice on! Then the program coordinator showed up and showed me some tools and techniques to carve into my wood. She provided me with a tool used to scrap away at the wood that was more efficient than the small hand chisel. I made three holes in my block of wood and then enlarged the holes working outward with the hand chisel. I decided to place the holes in a sort of uneven line, which was much more organic feeling than a regular oval and emulated by original design idea and the organic flow of the branches. I then used the hand saw, secured my wood with a clamp and chopped off the top of the triangle of my piece of wood. I wanted the entire piece to be rounded and smooth. I was super fortunate to run into a friend in BeAM who was woodshop trained and she helped me use the belt sander on
the rim and smoothed out the outside rim.
I then went back to hand chiseling out the inside. I was hand chiseling away when one of the kind BeAM staff members saw me struggling and showed me the dremel. The dremel worked similar to a belt sander, but on a much smaller scale. I utilized the dremel and sanded down the inside of my container until beAM closed for the night. Then I went to Lowes and bought a 60 grit sand-paper sponge. I used that to sand my project and once I was satisfied I switched to 120 grit that I found in my house. I sanded it down more and quoting one of my roommates kept sanding until she said “this thing is as soft as a baby’s bottom”
I am happy with how my second container turned out, it holds my everyday jewelry and I am glad I kept the bark in tact because that adds a natural feeling to the piece as well. The lesson I learned was wood is hard, quite literally to work with; it chips in all the places you don’t expect and is difficult to smooth out. I have a greater appreciation for artists who work with wood and I hope for their sake they know how to use power tools!
