Call and Response

Two forms, and the distance between them will not hold still.

From the front they stand apart — one taller, both leaning the same way, like they are listening to the same thing. Walk around the piece and they cross, overlapping until they nearly touch. Another quarter turn and they have pulled away from each other again.

Nothing moves. You do. That is the whole trick of it, and it is the reason this piece belongs somewhere people walk past rather than somewhere they sit still.

Neither piece was carved. They came out of the inlets along the North Carolina coast, pulled from the water on shrimping runs, hollowed and pitted through by years in the water.

The wood was sealed in polyurethane, then set on a handcrafted pine block raised on feet, so the whole piece sits up off the surface.

Details

• Dimensions: 7½" W × 5" D × 12½" H, including base
• Materials: Two pieces of natural driftwood, polyurethane sealed finish, hand-built pine base, dark stained with raised feet
• Origin: The inlets and coastal waters of North Carolina
• Permanently mounted — the pieces do not lift off the base
• One of a kind — this piece will not be repeated

The name is only one side

Turn this piece and it becomes something else.

That is true of everything we make, and it is the reason none of these sculptures has a front. We name each one for what we saw first — the angle that stopped us. Rotate it a quarter turn and the figure you were looking at is gone, and a different one is standing there. Ridges become a face. A wing becomes a wave. A crowd becomes one body.

So the name is our reading, not an instruction. Set it whichever way it speaks to you, and turn it again when it stops. People who live with these pieces tend to move them a few times a year without quite deciding to.

Carved by water

Not one line in this wood was cut by a blade. Every groove, hollow, and ridge was worked slowly — by salt, by tide, by years in the water — along a coast that has fed and carried people for generations. We think of these as pieces already carved by hands older than ours and left on the shore to be found.

What we do is small by comparison. We find them, we preserve them as they are, and we give them a base to stand on so they can be seen. Sometimes two pieces are set together because they belong together — but the wood itself is never cut, shaped, stained, or painted. Nothing is corrected. The wood says what it already had to say.

Care

Dust with a dry, soft cloth, taking care around the pitted hollows. Keep out of direct sunlight and away from moisture. For indoor display.