Leviathan

Twenty inches long, and it does not lie still.

The whole body runs low and forward, split down the length by a long open gap so the top and bottom part like a jaw. One end tapers to a clean point. The other opens into a rough dark mass, hollow and honeycombed, and from the right angle it reads exactly like a mouth coming open.

Turn it end for end and the animal is gone. What is left is water — a wave with its lip curling over, or a long swell running toward a shore. It is the most restless piece we have. Nothing in it agrees to be one thing.

Nothing was carved. It came out of the coastal inlets of North Carolina, found on shrimping and fishing runs, already open through the middle. The wood is sealed in polyurethane, which brings the amber and near-black up wet, and it is raised on small blocks along a long hand-built pine base so the open gap reads clear against the wood beneath it.

Details

• Dimensions: 20" W × 9" D × 7" H, including base
• Weight: 3 lb 3 oz
• Materials: Natural driftwood sealed in polyurethane, hand-built stained pine base
• Origin: The coastal inlets of North Carolina
• Permanently mounted — the sculpture does 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 or a soft brush, which works better through the open gap and the honeycombed end. Keep out of direct sunlight and away from moisture. For indoor display.